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V“~CT A 

SOLO 


BY 

PIERRE COALFLEET 



G.P. Putnam’s Sons 

N^ewYork & London 
^\)t Knickerbocker J)ress 

1924 


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Copyright, 1924 
by 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 





OCI 16 1324 


©C1A807558 



Made in the United States of America 











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Dedicated 
to THE 

Memory of Three Rare Women 

BESSIE SHAW 
RITA SHAW 
HARRIETT SHAW 

who at separate epochs played, like subtle 
moral virtuosi, on the mind of their young 
kinsman, and who, after enduring life with a 
beautiful morbid pride, passed quietly away 
before he had fully appreciated, much less 
acknowledged, his great spiritual debt. 

December 15, 1922. 






FOREWORD 


When the last t of your novel has been piously 
crossed, you experience a major bliss of authorship: the 
interval of intellectual torpor that succeeds the creative 
act. Months later, in a new mood, perhaps in a different 
land, you reread your story which has, in the interval, 
gone to school, graduated, and come home a book—with 
a jacket and a price. The experience is not unlike playing 
for the first time a piano transcription of a familiar 
symphony. It sounds thin; you miss a dozen orchestral 
colours, despite the exciting gain in clarity and the alien 
timbre. 

Suddenly the thought comes to you: but the public 
may not suspect that it is symphonic! For them it will 
be a sonata—and an unwieldy one. And a major chagrin 
of authorship is that you can’t sit on the arm of your 
reader’s chair and score in for him the parts between 
the lines. In the heat of writing you had taken it for 
granted that he was hearing what you heard, for was he 
not merely thousands of yous! He, you assumed, knew 
your people beforehand; that they were “born on Sunday, 
christened on Monday, married on Tuesday” and so on 
to the Saturday burial, because long before your day 
writers of fiction had recorded all the possible externals. 
But in this new mood, as you read impersonally what 
you had so personally set down, you are no longer the 
composer, and you see how absurd it was to think of the 
public as thousands of yous, when it is only a thousandth 
of you, just as you are a thousandth of it. 


VI 


FOREWORD 


Whereupon another revelation conies to you: your 
story is “modern.” That is only another way of saying 
that it has tacitly eliminated factors common to all the 
novels you had been brought up on—novels you had as¬ 
sumed your readers had been brought up on. Readers 
who have read many novels may catch factors in your 
story that you failed to “cancel out,” and they will think 
you old-fashioned. Readers who have read few novels 
may not recognize your two-thirds as their four-sixths! 
They may consequently doubt your final product and think 
you over-modern. Readers who have read no novels to 
speak of may think you mad and your hero madder. 
They may not even be aware that “heroes” were can¬ 
celled out years ago and that death is not necessarily a 
tragedy. They may see darkness where you saw dawn, 
futility where you saw hope, despair where you saw 
transfiguration. And you can’t hum in for them the 
subsidiary voices; the best you can do is to attempt a 
preface to the new edition, and you abhor prefaces. 

P. C. 


New York , 1924. 


SOLO 


PART I 


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‘ 















SOLO 


i 

i 

Life as an endless suite of “variations on a given 
theme.” This notion had filtered into the precocious 
imagination of Paul Minas, boy organist of the Baptist 
church in Hale’s Turning, Nova Scotia, and dyed his 
mind as he played on and on through a favourite Bach 
prelude which luckily suited the mood of the “collection” 
interval. Solo performances rescued him from the chaos 
of the external world, bringing him into a mysterious 
intimacy with life itself. For the moment he was the 
melody. He felt the music as intrinsically as he felt the 
warmth in his body, yet his relation to it was romantically 
tinged with a dormant consciousness of the fact that 
Phoebe Meddar, seated in the pew with her mother and 
brother, was, perforce, listening. 

The metaphor had not presented itself to him in words. 
His vocabulary, though fuller than that of Walter Dreer 
and Mark Laval, was a meagre wardrobe for the variety 
of roles he was capable of performing. From a mag¬ 
nanimous prince to a starving poet, from Thaddeus of 
Warsaw to the Lazarillo de Tormes, he became metamor¬ 
phosed with amazing facility. The notion of life as 
music had, without the agency of words, stolen into mind 
as he gave utterance, by means of manuals, pedals and 
3 


4 


SOLO 


stops, to the voices which kept rising and falling, alter¬ 
nating and intermingling, intoning his theme in varying 
keys and modes, with varying degrees of passion, long¬ 
ing, doubt and conviction. 

Each successive variation enounced the theme with ac¬ 
cretions of character. With each recurrence, though un¬ 
deniably the same entity, it was less naive, more 
experienced. “Like the same person a year later,” Paul 
might have stated it. He was far too engrossed in the 
sombre joy of performing to decipher whatever thoughts 
may have been flickering across the screen of conscious¬ 
ness, and it was only when a discreet “Psst!” smote his 
ear—thanks to Mr. Silva, the grizzled basso—that he 
emerged from his absorption. Then, with a surge of 
discomfiture, he realized he had played beyond the time 
limit. In the mirror above the manuals he saw that the 
ushers were standing with bowed heads, while the minis¬ 
ter frowningly awaited his cue to murmur over the up¬ 
raised plates a formula of thanks and consecration. With 
a hastily improvised modulation Paul brought the inter¬ 
lude to an end. 

His feelings were hurt, for he had been playing with 
an exalted faith in the divine purport of the music and 
resented the anticlimax. Moreover, he imagined Gritty 
Kestrell and Walter Dreer tittering, and blushed—felt 
his neck and ears getting all red for the congregation to 
see. 

He had been disconcerted more by the intrusion upon 
his private engrossment in the music than by a fear that 
his pride in “being organist” might have made him ap~ 
pear to be prolonging the offertory merely to show off, 
For having kept the minister waiting, he felt little or no 
compunction. The minister was only a prosy man with 
unpleasant thumbs and bad manners. As for the ushers, 
Paul objected to their pompousness when they made 
their rounds with the mahogany, baize-lined plates. They 


SOLO 


5 


looked forward to that moment as the culminating point 
of the service, indeed of the whole week, for it gave 
them an opportunity of being conspicuous. This he 
guessed with an intuition sharpened by rivalry, for he 
himself looked forward to the same moment, for the 
same reason. 

And he had an artist’s horror of the noise made by 
pennies and dimes when the whole attention of the con¬ 
gregation should be focussed on the music with which 
he so fervently filled the interval. They chinked loudest 
of all when one reached the part that called for a hushed, 
“yEolian harp” effect. If he stopped to chide himself 
for an illicit desire to be conspicuous in the consciousness 
of Phoebe and Gritty and Walter—chiefly Phoebe, whose 
image was always before him during the tedious week¬ 
day hours of practice—he quickly came to his own de¬ 
fence with the reflection that, after all, he, a boy of 
eleven, perched on that bench, stretching down to pedals 
which had to be built up with pieces of board —he was 
obviously more important than four old men in shiny 
coats. Anybody could be an usher! 

Those petty coins! He knew a naughty rhyme about 
them. Walter Dreer had whispered it to him in Sunday- 
school : 

“Dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping, 

Hear the pennies fall; 

Every one for Jesus, 

He will get them all!” 


2 

At dinner, in the kitchen of the big cold house, Paul 
hesitated to tell Aunt Verona of the contretemps dur¬ 
ing the offertory. Much as he venerated Aunt Verona, 


6 


SOLO 


much as he loved her in a repressed way, he was cautious 
with her. For, although Aunt Verona was kind and re¬ 
frained from scolding or punishing, she had a habit, 
when he reported his lapses or when she caught him in 
a misdemeanour, of making remarks to herself. The 
remarks were often unintelligible, yet Paul dreaded them 
more than he would have dreaded a reprimand. They 
seemed to imply that some melody had gone off-key, 
that he had been guilty of a moral discord. And there 
was something haunting about her countenance when she 
was disappointed—all the more so in that her prescrip¬ 
tion of well-doing was never specifically set forth: one 
could only surmise its nature by means of the awful, 
muttering suspension of relations that followed any de¬ 
fault. Yet despite its nonspecific quality, despite the 
fact that Aunt Verona never said “Do this” nor “Don’t 
do that,” as other grown-ups were for ever saying, there 
was something singularly consistent about her negative 
code. It became more intricate as you learned new facts, 
but it never contradicted itself. There were blind alleys 
in Aunt Verona’s ethics, and she would often say, “Wait 
till you’re a little older, child, then you’ll see what I 
mean.” But he was certain her prophecy would come 
true, for experience proved that the blank walls which had 
seemed to bar progress were in reality quite scalable 
fences beyond which lay inviting new fields. Growing 
up was largely a matter of discovering that Aunt Verona 
had been right about all the problems which had baffled 
one; consequently Paul paid blind homage to her wisdom 
and writhed whenever he was clumsy enough to bring a 
shadow across her face—whenever, as it were, he flatted. 

He knew, of course, that Aunt Verona would ply him 
with questions about the morning service, and she was 
the one person in the world who was never bored when 
he talked about his experiments with new combinations 
of stops. If he told her in detail how Miss Todd had 


SOLO 


7 


sung her solo, he did so merely because that implied a 
right to explain at equal length how he had played his 
prelude and interlude and postlude, and Aunt Verona 
at times fairly gloated, though she usually concluded 
with some such comment as, “Ah, but wait till you’ve 
mastered the new octave studies. It doesn’t do to be 
easily satisfied. Nothing’s so deadly as that.” 

One idiosyncrasy of Aunt Verona’s puzzled him more 
than all the others. Ever since he had been considered 
big enough to march off to church she had exacted that 
he should memorize the text of the sermon, which she 
promptly wrote down on a ragged piece of brown paper 
and stuffed into a drawer of a cabinet on the kitchen 
dresser. What she meant to do with the texts, or why 
she collected them, Paul could not, after considerable 
straining of mind, imagine. Often, on Sunday after¬ 
noons, he had caught her bursting into a thin laugh and 
repeating one or two words of the morning text, and 
this day was no exception, for as she went to the stove 
to get the coffee he heard her muttering, with a name¬ 
less sort of relish, “Toil not—to be sure . . . spin . . . 
Heaven protect my wits!” 

Not for worlds would Paul have ventured to inquire 
why Aunt Verona persisted in this rite, yet he would no 
more have dared forget the text than neglect saying his 
prayers, for if he did he knew that one of those blank 
expressions would come into Aunt Verona’s face and 
she would go off to the playroom and sit for hours look¬ 
ing out of the window at the cherry tree, whilst he suf¬ 
fered inconsolable miseries of guilt at having been care¬ 
less enough to let the pattern of life go “crookedy,” to 
play a false note, as it were. Once he had forgotten, and 
on the spur of the moment invented a substitute, an old 
Sunday-school “golden” text that had leapt to his 
tongue as a very present help, and she had unsuspectingly 
Written it down and stuffed it into the drawer. That had 


8 


SOLO 


made him feel a cad all day. Even if she did nothing 
with the texts, it was a torture for him to know that 
there was one spurious text among all the genuine. 

Every Sunday morning, immediately after breakfast, 
Aunt Verona took him to the playroom and gave him a 
final drill in the anthems and solos for the day, correcting 
him when he played too fast, and keeping a kind but un¬ 
cannily vigilant eye on his fourth finger, which, for all 
the special exercises she had devised, persisted in being 
weaker than the others—a weakness which made for un¬ 
steady trills. Sometimes when he was practising alone 
she would call out from the kitchen in the middle of an 
etude, “Paul, Paul, go back two bars. You’ve left out an 
A-flat in the bass,” and he never ceased wondering how 
she could unerringly name the note. 

He had known for a long while that Aunt Verona 
was unlike every other creature in Hale’s Turning, but 
he had taken her major oddities for granted. As he 
grew older he marvelled more and more. He wondered, 
for instance, why she never went to church, since she 
took such an interest in its affairs. He had been less 
offhand in his reports since the day, years ago, when, in 
reply to her query as to what the Sunday-school teacher 
had talked about, he had said, “Oh, about Jesus and God 
and all those!” For on that occasion Aunt Verona had 
laughed till she cried. He shrank from questioning her 
about herself, both because he was shy and because he 
knew she disliked personal questions, which she either 
evaded or dismissed with a peremptory “I’ll tell you 
some day.” In daylight she never ventured farther than 
the well, and as far back as Paul could remember there 
had been only three or four occasions, at dead of night, 
when she had passed through the gate into the street. 
These ominous sorties had been preceded by long fits 
of depression. Then Aunt Verona had gone to one of 
the unused rooms upstairs, put on a veil and some appall- 


SOLO 


9 


ingly old-fashioned clothes, installed him before the 
kitchen stove with a book and an apple, and stolen out 
for an hour or two. 

He had suffered mental agony during her absences, for 
he had guessed that she had been at the doctor’s and the 
association of the ideas of doctor and night-time awak¬ 
ened in his mind a tragic memory. He saw himself again 
as a boy of three in Aunt Verona’s arms wriggling, im¬ 
ploring his mother not to go away. He saw his mother 
run back into the room, kneel to kiss him, the tears 
streaming down her cheeks, then wrench herself away, 
heedless of his din, to go to a fiendish place she called the 
“sanatorium.” At that point the picture became blurred, 
for she had never come back. 

The terror bred in him by that dim tragedy had come 
stealing back like a ghost on the few occasions when 
Aunt Verona had gone out, steadfastly refusing to let 
him accompany her. He would rather have faced a 
legion of doctors with her than be left at the mercy of 
weird shadows, but nothing would have induced him to 
say “Yes” when Aunt Verona enjoined, in parting, “You 
won’t be afraid, child, will you?” Ashamed of his fears, 
he sat with his book until the outer door closed, then 
retreated to a corner of the room, pressed his back against 
the protective wall and waited, tense and wide-eyed. 

He wondered, too, why he should have to go on to Miss 
Todd’s for choir rehearsal, when the choir might much 
more conveniently have come to Aunt Verona’s. Miss 
Todd had only a tinny upright piano and her house was 
on the hill beyond the church, whereas Aunt Verona had 
a concert piano that had been brought on his father’s 
ship all the way from Hamburg in Germany, the best 
piano in the whole province, and the harmonium which 
had belonged to his mother was almost as good as a pipe 
organ. Yet it was somehow unthinkable that the choir 
should come to Aunt Verona’s house. For that matter 


10 


SOLO 


nobody came but Dr. Wilcove, Mr. Silva, the chore-man, 
and Becky States, the coloured washerwoman, who wore 
long glass earrings which she had abstracted from a 
broken lamp-shade in the parlour. Gritty Kestrell and 
Walter Dreer and Mark Laval didn’t count, for they were 
children and never came indoors unless it was stormy. 
Paul was ill at ease when he brought them into the bare 
house, because it was so different from the noisy, cheer¬ 
ful interiors of other houses. Yet he secretly noted that 
when Aunt Verona sat them down to a table in the play¬ 
room and served them with milk and bread and butter and 
jam and cookies, there was a vague distinction about the 
occasion that subdued Gritty and reduced the elegant 
Walter to whispers—Walter whose mother made entranc¬ 
ing frosted walnut cakes! 

If people knocked at the door Paul answered. Unless 
the caller were a tramp, a gipsy woman or a pedlar, it 
was his duty to say, “My aunt’s not at home,” though 
every one in Hale’s Turning knew the contrary. At 
first, when he had protested against this fib, Aunt Verona 
had said, “Certain fibs have to be told, child, in the interest 
of truth as a whole. Little negatives are sometimes 
comprised in a positive total. You’ll understand one 
day. Besides, in Milieux, where people are less literal¬ 
minded, it’s simply a way of saying ‘She doesn’t wish to 
receive visitors to-day.’ ” She had seemed unusually 
serious and had sat looking out the playroom window, her 
eyes on some remote horizon of thought. Paul, drawing 
a picture of a locomotive on the blackboard, had kept as 
quiet as a mouse. Then, speaking to herself, Aunt Verona 
had blurted out, “God, what a labyrinth, labyrinth, laby¬ 
rinth !” 

Her cryptic manner and the strange word had abashed 
him, and he had put down his chalk preparing to steal 
away. With a start Aunt Verona had remembered his 
existence and fixed him with a stern eye, modified by 


SOLO 


ii 


her extraordinary, serious smile. “You, child, must never 
say that. I can, but you mustn’t. Promise.” 

He had promised readily enough and run out of doors. 
But at supper he couldn’t resist asking a question which 
had been tormenting him. “Why mustn’t I say ‘laby¬ 
rinth,’ Aunt Verona?” he had finally ventured. Aunt 
Verona had been puzzled a long while, then broke into 
one of her rare, kind laughs. “It was the other word, 
child, that Aunt Verona wished you not to say—the first 
word.” 

“Oh, ‘God?’” 

“Yes . . . Except in your prayers.” 

From Aunt Verona’s change of expression he had 
known he mustn’t pursue the subject, and alone in bed 
he had got himself involved in an intricate piece of 
casuistry, trying to define the legitimate use and vain 
misuse of the name of the Deity. Intricate, because it 
had all to be negotiated without implying that Aunt 
Verona was a breaker of the commandments. The dire 
consequences of taking the name of the Lord in vain 
were minutely known to him. Hell was redder and hotter 
than the coals over which Aunt Verona baked onions 
when he had a cold, and it was obvious that one’s own 
aunt would not go to such a place when she died. Be¬ 
sides, he took it for granted that Aunt Verona had been 
“saved.” It was certainly lucky that his mother had been 
saved before she entered that fatal sanatorium! 

Mark Laval, who attended Mass in the heathenish 
church across the river where the French-Canadian 
lumberjacks lived, had told him that only Catholics got 
to heaven, and Paul had run home terrified at the thought 
that his mother might be baking like an onion, till Mr. 
Silva, who was chopping wood in the yard, had reassured 
him. Mr. Silva—whom the people of Hale’s Turning 
called “Mr. Silver” unaware that Silva meant “woods” 
—said that the Catholics invented such stories in the hope 


12 


SOLO 


of converting you, and that night Paul had dreamt he 
was running for dear life down an endless corridor pur 
sued by priests in black robes who were breathing ha 
and trying to lasso him with objects like blcycle ty yS; 
He had stumbled and wakened just in time, but hadnt 
dared go to Aunt Verona’s door and ask her to let him 
crawl into her bed, for he was a big boy of seven. 


3 

Mr. Silva was continually throwing off remarks which 
were as unusual in their way as were the objects he 
whittled out of pieces of board. When the sap was run¬ 
ning in the alders he could make better whistles and sling¬ 
shots than Mark Laval. Mark was clever with his blunt 
fingers, but you couldn’t be sure that his whistles would 
blow or that the bark wouldn’t split, whereas Mr. Silva 

was infallible. , A 

One day when Paul came in from school to practise, 
Mr. Silva was replacing the heavy lid of the piano; the 
piano a queue, as Aunt Verona had called it on one of 
their French-speaking days, and the phrase had made 
Paul giggle. 

On & newly-tuned instrument old pieces revived, like 
wilting flowers when put into water, and Paul played 
with extra zest. Mr. Silva lingered in the room, and 
Paul guessed that Aunt Verona suffered him to remain 
because his ideas stimulated her, as did those of the 
tramps and gipsies. Paul shared her contempt for the 
general mentality of the village and her respect for the 
Portuguese Jack of all trades whom the village dismissed 
as “odd.” He had asked Aunt Verona why Mr. Silva 
was contented to do chores for a living rather than return 
to Oporto where there were palm trees or go to Halifax 
where there were hundreds of pianos to tune, but it had 
been difficult to get all his questions formulated in German, 
which Aunt Verona made him speak on Mondays and 


SOLO 


13 


Wednesdays, and she had merely replied, “Ohne Zweifel, 
weil er gef unden hat, dass er hier gliicklicher ist, als ir- 
gendwo anders.” 

After Paul had tested the piano, he turned to Mr. Silva, 
who was standing in the doorway fingering his cap and 
beaming with a sort of wistful pleasure. “Ah,” said 
the old man, “music is the universal language. If every 
one had an aunt like yours to teach them, there would be 
no more wars. The nations would take the yoke of 
Beethoven and Bach upon them and learn of them. When 
you grow up you will write noble music too, and people 
of all countries will play it, spreading love and truth 
throughout the world.” 

From Mr. Silva’s speech Paul drew two overwhelming 
deductions. First, people wrote music! He had as¬ 
sumed that all music, the world’s fixed repertoire, was 
comprised in the volumes and sheets which were kept in 
a trunk upstairs and brought forth one at a time, to be 
mastered in succession—a series which had commenced 
when he was five years old with “The Merry Peasant” 
and which was to culminate in a certain redoubtable Liszt 
Sonata for the satisfactory performance of which, when 
he had grown up to its measure, Aunt Verona was 
pledged to hand over to him the watch which the Queen 
of Holland had given his father for rescuing nineteen 
Dutch sailors from a burning ship. It had never occurred 
to him that Beethoven and Bach had once been boys, then 
grown up and made music out of their heads. 

The second deduction was that German and Dutch 
and Spanish and perhaps even Chinese boys liked music 
too—the very pieces Canadian boys liked! He had, with¬ 
out stopping to think about it, assumed that music was 
English, like spelling and geography. He had always 
realized that one would have to talk German to a Ger¬ 
man boy, and one wouldn’t have anything to say to a 
Chinese boy—except “Muckahighlo,” which Mr. Silva 


14 


SOLO 


said was swearing—but now he realized that, no matter 
“what nation of a boy” he might meet, he could always, 
in a sense, get on terms with the stranger by playing the 
piano. This rich thought coloured his hours of prac¬ 
tice for many days. The following Sunday in church he 
pretended that the congregation was composed of dele¬ 
gates from every nation under the sun, quite without 
means of making themselves understood to one another 
until the moment when he climbed on his bench and old 
Silas out in the vestry turned on the water power that 
pumped the organ. And, before the choir straggled in, 
he gave himself the illusion that the congregation were 
sighing in relief and listening eagerly, that their minds, 
concentrated on the oecumenical strains of the voluntary 
—especially chosen for the occasion and sweetly conde¬ 
scending in spirit—were flowing into a single stream of 
intelligence, that the world was being flooded with good 
tidings. Phoebe Meddar—whose mother’s hat was the 
only "sign of the enchanted family that came within range 
of the organ mirror—was a delegate from Alcantara, a 
princess who knew not a word of any human language, 
but to whose ears every vibration of sound in the gilded 
pipes revealed sweet secrets. Walter Dreer was a swash¬ 
buckling Don, secretly in love with the Princess, but un¬ 
able to declare himself inasmuch as he couldn’t even play 
“I love coffee, I love tea” on the black notes. 

For days, as he sailed boats in the river with Mark 
Laval or whittled arrows and swords in the shop where 
Gritty Kestrell’s father made coffins, he kept coming 
back to Mr. Silva’s notion of music reaching out over the 
world as a healing and teaching influence. One afternoon, 
as he sat swinging on the gate in front of Aunt Verona’s 
empty house, where tiger lilies grew rank among the 
long grass, he dreamed that Queen Victoria had sent for 
him and after touching his shoulder with a shining Excali- 
bur, commanded him to go out to South Africa and play 


SOLO 


15 


the Moonlight Sonata to the angry Boers—on a vast 
organ with pipes that stretched like a golden bridge to 
heaven. 

4 

Paul and Gritty sometimes played “ship” among the 
impressive boxes which Gritty’s mother forbade her to 
mention by name. Once Gritty had occasion to write 
the word, and she spelt it “coughin.” In a small show¬ 
room were even more mysterious boxes, shiny and 
trimmed with metal. They had arrived ready-made from 
Halifax, wrapped in blue tissue paper which Gritty and 
Paul tore off and soaked in their school bottles, for it 
was a point of taste at school to have “coloured water” 
with which to wash one’s slate, just as it was a point of 
respectability to have a slice of cake and an apple to top 
off one’s sandwich luncheons on stormy days. 

On his fifth birthday Paul had commenced school, for, 
although it was a Thursday and the middle of a term, 
Aunt Verona had had no choice but to fulfil a promise 
that he should be allowed to attend “when he got five.” 
As Aunt Verona never appeared in public, it had fallen 
to the lot of Mr. Silva to escort Paul to Miss Ranston 
with an explanatory note. 

His clean face and jaunty person were offensive to the 
big boys who played leap-frog in the angle of the school 
steps, and on the second day their sense of injury ex¬ 
pressed itself in a concerted attack. He found himself 
enclosed in a ring of howling red Indians. Before his 
eyes were dancing legs and visions of lifelong humilia¬ 
tion; but he was armed with presence of mind and an 
umbrella. Deliberately he selected the ringleader and 
administered a jab with the umbrella point which in the 
confusion went to his assailant’s eye and pierced it. 

“Serves you right,” Paul piped, as the others, scared 
at the sight of blood, fell back. That is what he said, 


l6 


SOLO 


and mounted the high steps, intact as a god, clutching 
his umbrella. Out of the enemy’s reach he collapsed, 
and in sickness and horror clung to the caressing Miss 
Ranston, explaining to her what he had disdained to ex¬ 
plain to the beastly others, that he had aimed at Bean- 
Oh’s stomach, but some one had pushed his elbow. 

He had, however, described a charmed circle about 
himself, even though his victim, who squinted ever after, 
was a torturing reminder of his first experience of mean¬ 
ingless hostility, his first battle for freedom. 

His next epoch-making exploit, two years later, was 
to become enamoured of a little girl whose surname 
began, romantically, with the same letter as his own, 
and who consequently stood next him in the Friday 
afternoon spelling matches. To that little girl, Leila 
Meddar, there clung a most ethereal odour of coco-nut 
cookies. Night after night Paul lay awake composing 
dialogues designed for every conceivable contingency 
whereby they might find themselves together—they two 
and nobody else. He hoarded bits of tissue paper and 
rummaged in Aunt Verona’s attic for choice rags, that 
Leila might one day have the prettiest bottle of coloured 
water in the class. He spent afternoons in the fields 
looking for new “secrets,” a word which in the code of 
the undertaker’s daughter and himself signified “flower¬ 
ing mosses.” Whenever the time was ripe, Leila should 
be brought to see and admire them. To no living soul 
—not even to Gritty, who was a tomboy and a fairly 
safe confidante—did he breathe a hint of his ardours. 

One Monday he was appointed monitor for the boys, 
and Leila Meddar, in automatic accordance with a ro¬ 
mantic alphabet, was appointed for the girls. This 
meant that for five precious days it would be their joint 
duty to dust the blackboards and gather hats and coats 
for distribution at dismissal time. Daily he rehearsed a 
declaration for the cloakroom, but daily it adhered to his 


SOLO 


17 


tongue. He could merely swoon in the sweet, pervasive 
odour of cookies. 

One morning Leila was absent, and the world grew 
grey. Day after day her seat remained vacant, and Paul 
took to walking by the river, casting furtive glances at 
the windows of the white cottage on the bluff where 
Leila lived. There was no sign of her and he would go 
back to the fields behind Aunt Verona’s house and say 
comforting things to his patient “secrets.” Then one 
day Miss Ranston, in a queer voice, told them that Leila 
Meddar would never come back to school, for she had 
been ill and God had taken her up into heaven where she 
would not have to suffer any more. 

He walked from the schoolhouse in a daze, his thoughts 
floating high like balloons, trying to find some resting- 
place in his clouded knowledge concerning the other 
world. He took it for granted that Leila was “saved” 
and would go—perhaps had gone, even before the funeral 
—to the region of pearl and jasper which his mother and 
father and Uncle Isaiah and Becky States’s little black 
boy inhabited. The light of his love for Leila was ab¬ 
sorbed into the refulgence of this new experience, so pal¬ 
pitatingly mysterious, so gloriously awful. For a while 
he picked clover and buttercups and daisies, on a name¬ 
less urge, and wandered from secret to secret, as if to 
cull the images of Leila and rebreathe the ethereal odour 
of cookies. With flowers still in his hand he walked across 
the meadow and down the road toward Gritty Kestrell’s 
brown house, over which clambered spreading vines of 
blue clematis. Gritty was not in sight, but in front of 
the carpenter shop, at the foot of the silvery, creaking 
windmill, Mr. Kestrell was planing a board in an intent 
manner which made Paul sure that his activity was in 
some way associated with Leila. 

After supper Aunt Verona said illuminating things 
about sickness and dying, then accompanied him to his 


l8 


SOLO 


bedroom, as she had done in the days before he was a 
big boy of seven. But she did not explain how such a 
little girl, no older than himself, could so unexpectedly 
stop living. Nor could Aunt Verona in any way bridge 
the yawning gap between Leila’s existence as a girl who 
stood in spelling matches, who ate sandwiches and played 
tag, and her transfiguration into something divine, im¬ 
personal and infinitely far-away, like the people in the 
Bible. In bed Paul tried to picture heaven, as he had 
done on the occasion of a funeral procession across the 
river. Suddenly he was confronted with the thought that 
French-Canadians went to the same heaven as Leila, for 
Mr. Silva maintained that even Catholics went there when 
they were sincerely good. He wondered if God spoke 
French to them, or if He had some arrangement like 
Aunt Verona’s, speaking different languages on differ¬ 
ent days. Perhaps everybody in heaven had to learn 
English. Very likely, for the Bible was in English. He 
fell asleep at last, and next day Aunt Verona gave him 
ten cents to take to Miss Ranston as his contribution 
towards the wreath which the school was to present. The 
flowers he had picked in the meadow were still lying on 
his window sill. Without knowing why he did so, he 
emptied the treasures out of his cracked lacquer box, 
placed the flowers in it, gently closed the lid and locked 
it, then took it to the bureau and placed it far back in 
the corner of an empty drawer. 

On the day of the funeral a half-holiday was declared, 
an event which exalted the otherwise undistinguished 
little Leila upon a plane with the Prime Minister. Walter 
Dreer lowered the flag, and all the children marched to 
the cemetery. On the way up the long hill, Bean-Oh, who 
since the distant occasion when Paul had nearly blinded 
him had been particularly amicable, confided that Leila 
had perished of a simultaneous indulgence in milk and 
cucumbers. Gritty Kestrell denied this and swore it was 


SOLO 


19 


bad drains. Paul could only shrink, and marvel. As 
though in a trance he still saw a waxen face surrounded 
by lilies; still felt the tightness of chest and the nameless 
awe; and with a terrible, child’s accuracy of perception 
he retained the impression of freckles—five or six— 
brown, brown, brown, left stranded on a tiny white nose 
by the ebbing of life. 

In those days he was an ardent Christian; a defender 
of the faith. He dwelt in Abram’s bosom; he went 
nightly “to Jesus”; he won Sunday-school “mottoes” and 
celluloid buttons; he lived through the week in the ecsta¬ 
tic anticipation of the Sabbath; he believed in and com¬ 
muned with the heavenly hosts. And that waxen face, 
incongruously befreckled, hovered over him night and 
day, being especially present when he was in the attic 
thieving lumps of sugar from the box which had been 
sent to Aunt Verona in return for Sunlight Soap wrap¬ 
pers, or when he was pouring purloined milk into the 
batter of Gritty’s mud-cakes. How often, before doing 
perfectly legitimate things—things a little boy must do 
every day—did he hesitate in painful embarrassment at 
the thought of a little girl angel looking on! 

5 

Romantic love for Leila had been so completely diffused 
in the wonderment which Paul continued to experience 
after she had been taken up to God, that it ceased to exist 
as a separate emotion, and gradually he made the dis¬ 
covery that girls bored him. He decided that when he 
grew up he would marry Miss Todd, and thus dismissed 
the whole issue of sex from his mind—always with an ex¬ 
ception in favour of Gritty Kestrell, who was a tomboy. 
Gritty was two months older than himself and could 
climb trees and skate figure eights and run races with any 
boy in Hale’s Turning. She had the added advantages 
of being able to do up sore fingers and hold her own with 


20 


SOLO 


girls, to outwit or champion them as the eternal ends 
of justice might decree. Gritty could umpire a boy’s 
lacrosse match, or substitute if any member of either team 
were disabled. She scorned handicaps. She hadn’t much 
patience with dolls, and tore off the wig of Myrtle Wil- 
cove’s doll from Halifax in order that its attack of scarlet 
fever should seem more realistic. But, overwhelmed by 
Myrtle’s even more realistic grief, Gritty had promptly 
readjusted the wig with glue “swiped” from her father’s 
workshop. When it came to sailing boats, Gritty would 
never learn how to trim the sails and point the rudder to 
the requirements of the breeze; but, if your boat got 
stuck in the reeds of the marsh pond, nobody was more 
resourceful than she in getting it back for you, and she 
would wade in up to her middle at a pinch. She was the 
only girl who had ever “shinned up” to the top of the 
school flagpole. Once she had eaten a grasshopper on a 
dare, and next day had blackened Bob Meddar’s eye for 
calling her “Bugs.” 

As a matter of fact, boys also, except in the case of a 
very few individuals, bored Paul. Among them he was 
never quite free from the dread that he was out of the 
picture, that the slightest expression of his really-truly 
opinion, as distinct from a sort of feigned community 
opinion, would at once let him in for a repetition of the 
hostile manifestation that had ended so disastrously on 
his second day of school. Indeed, the umbrella exploit 
had been re-enacted many times in terms of mordant 
words. 

Before his ninth birthday he had discovered himself 
out of step with boys who did not live in a bare, mysteri¬ 
ous house with an eccentric aunt. Privately he endured 
tortures of doubt at his own unclassifiability, and the 
pain was made more poignant by a conviction that he, 
and certainly Aunt Verona, were for some inexplicable 
reason more entitled to deference than the Dreers and 


SOLO 


21 


Wilcoves, for all their frosted cakes and rubber-tyred 
carriages. There was scant balm in the knowledge that 
Aunt Verona had the finest piano in the province, for no 
one came to see it, and unless the windows were open and 
you played fortissimo it couldn’t be heard from the street. 
Moreover, there was something absurd about his clothes. 
In summer-time the blouses which Aunt Verona made 
for him were considered girlish, and in winter-time his 
mittens and cap were too obviously hand-knitted. If he 
repeated stories which he had read in Aunt Verona’s 
books— Oliver Twist and Kenilworth and Paul et Vir- 
ginie —he was rated as “stuck-up.” If he recited fables 
like “Un mal qui repand la terreur ” or sang ditties like 
“Es klappert die Muhle he was accused of showing off. 

On the other hand if he merely remained on the edge of 
the circle trying to enter into the spirit of a discussion or 
a game, his self-consciousness condemned him to a sub¬ 
sidiary function. He merely held things, while others 
performed feats. Although he might efface himself for 
a time, his nature was such that he preferred solitude to 
being a nonentity. In his own yard he was more despotic. 
But Mark Laval and Walter Dreer and Gritty Kestrell 
were the only playmates who ever came to his yard, and 
of these only Mark Laval, the humblest, could be counted 
on to remain when more exciting games were elsewhere 
afoot. 

To avoid mockery he tried concealing his eccentricities, 
but that involved a cultivation of false enthusiasms from 
which his nature recoiled more inexorably than it shrank 
from ridicule. Often enough he faithfully chased a ball 
or a puck in the hope that by so doing he might win from 
his playmates a reciprocal wisp of goodwill and under¬ 
standing regarding his mental games—the images and 
ideas which his mind kept pursuing night and day. But 
whenever he invited others to share his images he was met 
with incomprehension or jeers. Only Mark and Walter 


22 


SOLO 


showed an interest in his ideas, and the latter had a way 
of steering them into dubious channels. 

Meanwhile Paul was continually being put off the field 
for “fumbling the ball” or lack of team sense. His most 
familiar sensation came to be that of yearning, followed 
by retaliatory moods given over to the building of a wall 
of indifference, moods coloured by music and stories. 
Loneliness, fear, doubt were his familiars, and his confi¬ 
dante was an aunt who, if one were not infinitely tactful, 
would glide away and sit for hours looking out of the 
window at nothing. More and more he resorted to 
silence, and, where necessary—as in the case of clothes 
—defiance of public opinion, but there was a heavy mental 
and emotional price to pay for silence and defiance, and 
his shoulders were never free of the burden of anomaly. 
This gave a tentative quality even to his most spontaneous 
smiles and made him inordinately diffident. 

One of the few beings with whom there was no need 
for play-acting was the sympathetic old Portuguese, and, 
in the twilight of summer evenings when Paul went off 
to the pasture to help drive home the cow from which 
Mr. Silva derived part of his small income, there was a 
blessed sense of security in the companionship. He had 
not been able to tell Mr. Silva about Leila, for there were 
no words for his feeling, but he had told him about the 
afternoon when he and Wilfrid Fraser had gone with 
empty tomato tins and an axe into the summer woods 
to hunt for maple sugar and by force of talking about the 
possibility of a bull appearing on the scene had turned 
and run for their lives, though there wasn’t a bull within 
a mile. Mr. Silva had gently explained that maple sugar 
could be drawn only in the first months of the year when 
the snow was still on the ground. Anyone else would 
have mocked him for being so ignorant and timid. 

Mr. Silva had once been carpenter on a ship of which 
Paul’s father had been captain, and could tell priceless 


SOLO 


23 


tales of his father’s exploits. For Mr. Silva as well as 
for the boy, Captain Andrew Minas was a demigod. 

There were long periods during which Paul yearned 
to be friendly with boys who knew how to make capital 
of his affection. And, although he learned to discrimi¬ 
nate, he couldn’t resist overtures. Those boys got his 
tops and marbles at scandalous bargains. But there was a 
definite limit to Paul’s compliance and their knowledge 
of that fact created a margin of deference, even while 
they chafed under an authoritativeness they couldn’t ana¬ 
lyze. When the limit was exceeded Paul resorted to the 
umbrella expedient. How many times did he allow his 
feelings to be buffeted until, wounded to the quick by a 
heedless remark, he turned and pierced his victim with 
sharp words aimed at his betrayer’s most secret weakness! 
An accomplishment that caused the victim momentary 
pain, dying away into vague spite, and Paul prolonged 
tortures of penitence. 

His most reliable friend was Mark Laval, who was 
tabooed by most of the others. If Paul was freakish, 
he at least toed the mark in respect of manners and clean 
handkerchiefs, but his friend, two years older, was a 
ragamuffin with a shock of dusty hair, a great toothy 
mouth in an ugly face, and only a dog-like fidelity to 
commend him. Although Paul had always been con¬ 
scious of Mark Laval as a sympathetic figure in his back¬ 
ground, their friendship dated from a certain afternoon 
in his tenth year, when, on getting up from the piano he 
saw Mark seated under the cherry tree, chewing grass- 
stalks and dreaming. Strangely elated, Paul stole back to 
play his showiest solo, after which, on finding Mark in 
the same pensive attitude, he opened the door 
as casually as though he knew nothing of the other’s 
presence. 

Mark ceased pulling at the grass and looked up bash¬ 
fully. As a means of breaking the ice, Paul slid down 


24 SOLO 

the rounded surface of the wall at the side of the door¬ 
step. 

“Seen Uncle Tom's Cabin?" Mark asked. 

Paul had no idea what Uncle Tom's Cabin was, and 
Mark explained that he had walked nine miles to see it 
performed in Dominion Hall at Bridgetown. He had 
paid ten cents for a seat. A man had given him the dime 
for carrying a bag. 

Paul’s Sunday-school teacher had impressed upon him 
the evil of theatres, her clinching argument being that a 
former President of the United States had been shot in 
one! He maintained a patronizing silence. 

“I could show you what it’s like, with little Eva and 
Legree and the bloodhounds,” Mark offered, “if I had 
a pencil and some paper.” 

Paul glanced doubtfully at Mark’s muddy boots, but 
in the end invited him to go round to the back porch, 
where he would meet him with pencils and paper and 
wax crayons, and they suddenly dashed off. 

On the back porch Mark showed Paul what little Eva 
“was like.” He also showed him what Julius Caesar was 
like, and Boadicea and Napoleon and the boy on the burn¬ 
ing deck. He gave them all Roman noses and crimson- 
lake lips, and portrayed them “eyes-right,” with turrets 
and ramparts in the background. But they were very 
real to Paul by dint of their creator’s intense, life-endow¬ 
ing belief in them, just as Paul’s music had been very 
real to Mark Laval for a similar reason. On the strength 
of that common interest Paul suddenly realized that Mark 
was his friend. Simultaneously he was penetrated with 
a sense of the French boy’s forlornness. 

Mark had a father who came down from the lumber 
camps for whisky and vowed to kick all the nonsense out 
of his son. He was at school only because the authorities 
insisted on it. As soon as the law allowed, Mark’s father 
planned to take him into the woods. With this destiny 


SOLO 


2 5 


before bis eyes, Mark clung to the few bright opportuni¬ 
ties that remained. Paul thought of his friend as a boy 
doomed to look at life through a window, a wild boy 
infinitely crude, yet infinitely gentle, his eyes reflecting 
passionate, wistful, vain enthusiasms. 

Looking back on that friendship Paul was to recognize 
in Mark Laval the first person who set for him an ex¬ 
ample of the vigorous individuality of thought and 
expression that is unaware of what other people may be 
thinking and saying; his own furtive defiance seemed ig¬ 
noble by contrast. With a Philistinism hard to conquer, 
he contemplated Mark’s ragged clothes and thought of 
his squalid home, then, in an access of contrition, invited 
Mark to stay to tea. Aunt Verona made no objection, 
and Mark, after dutifully scraping his boots, found him¬ 
self confronted by a mysterious array of china while 
his host mumbled a mysterious incantation ending in 
“Amen.” He was abashed by his own mishandling of 
the spoons, yet so eager not to offend Paul and Aunt 
Verona that he seemed to be apologizing to them for the 
daintiness of Aunt Verona’s taste, and she talked rather 
brightly to put him at his ease. When he had gone, Paul, 
for the first time in years, ventured to hug Aunt Verona 
without invitation. 

Next morning, as he was leaving the house, he found 
on the doorstep a smudged, paper-bound copy of Ruy 
Bias. In the margins were sketches and annotations. On 
one page he read: “This ought to be sung.” And Paul’s 
mind danced for glee at the discovery that there were 
lyrics in the world which might be set to music. He 
had thought of songs as having always existed in an inex¬ 
tricable alliance with their music, like hymns. Trust old 
Mark to open his eyes! 

On the title-page was this inscription: “For you to 
read and keep Paul. I’ll never forget yestiddy.” For 
a second Paul shrank. The Puritanism of countless for- 


26 


SOLO 


bears was responsible for a slight stiffening of spine at 
this friendly demonstration. His pendantism was re¬ 
volted by the fault in spelling. Nevertheless he skipped 
off to school with more kindliness in his heart than ever 
before. 


6 

His alternative chum of this period was a boy of a 
conventionalized stamp. Walter Dreer’s easy assurance 
reflected a definite social status which was substantiated 
by his father's victories at the local polls, and by the 
frosted walnut cakes that topped off his mother s Sun¬ 
day-evening suppers. Everything about Walter was com¬ 
fortably and infallibly bourgeois but his private thoughts, 
and these, as Paul later came to realize, verged on the 
lurid. Walter’s prurience was an undercurrent against 
which Paul instinctively swam, cultivating Walter for 
his amiable laughter at one’s whims and fancies, for his 
resourcefulness, his flexibility, his boundless information, 
and (since Paul was so generally isolated) for his popu¬ 
larity, which was in Paul’s eyes a supreme distinction. 
Walter, mirabile dictu, approved of him, or seemed to, 
whereas he had always expected conventional people to 
disapprove or at the most approve with definite reserva¬ 
tions. Above all, Walter constituted him the privileged 
audience for his best capers cut, as it were, for Paul’s 
private amusement and in confident anticipation of 
Paul’s rapturous applause—Walter, who had the whole 
village to choose from! Paul worshipped him. 

Walter’s cardinal deficiency was that he snubbed Mark 
Laval. Though Paul felt this to be unjust, he couldn’t 
help being influenced by Walter’s contemptuous opinion, 
and was guilty of treating Mark with less generosity than 
his instinct prompted. Moreover, in order to win Walter’s 
fuller approval, he was at some pains to conceal his own 


SOLO 


27 


more glaring oddities, lest Walter might one day dismiss 
him too as a “freak.” 

For a year or two this comradeship was very close, 
being fostered by the fact that Walter, unlike Mark 
Laval, attended Paul’s Sunday-school, which in a clan¬ 
nish community constituted an alliance. Then came a 
dark winter’s day when Paul found Walter deep in the 
confidence of an enemy, John Ashmill, the son of Dave 
Ashmill who owned forests and gypsum mines, John 
Ashmill who had given Paul the nickname of “Polly” and 
always sang out, “Polly want a cracker?” when he hove 
into view. Walter was aware of the feud, and Paul was 
obliged to conclude that his chum was cultivating his 
enemy for the sake of the latter’s liberal allowance and 
his superior sleds and skates. 

It was a Saturday morning, a school holiday, and Paul 
had set off to find Walter, when he encountered him 
in company with his new playmate, a ribald despot with 
whom Paul supposed it was his duty to “mix,” but on 
account of whose physical sense of humour he was carry¬ 
ing a scar on his temple, as well as more dire wounds 
that couldn’t be seen. Paul greeted them without stop¬ 
ping, walking briskly towards nowhere. A solitary day 
lay before him, for Mark Laval had been taken off to the 
woods by his father, and Gritty was, after all, only half 
boy, and he had forsworn girls. 

Then, at the corner, a malicious snowball burst upon his 
cap and penetrated freezingly into a corner of a stubborn 
young heart. 

For six months after that he refused to speak to Walter 
Dreer, though they continued to meet in the street, and to 
sit in the same classroom. It was a bitterly unhappy 
winter and he suffered for the sake of a principle which 
he secretly felt to be distorted. He was flatting and dis¬ 
cording . Instinct told him that an uncompromising atti¬ 
tude always failed to prove itself justified. Yet he was 


28 


SOLO 


powerless in the grip of his stubbornness. Often he 
thought of confiding in Aunt Verona but another pre¬ 
cocious instinct warned him that Aunt Verona herself 
was a victim of some similar fate. At night he wrestled 
long hours with his angel rehearsing conciliatory 
speeches, yet day after day he passed Walter 
without a sign, and became almost mechanically 
oblivious of his friend’s existence, all the while mourning 
his loss. 

During the first days of spring, in Paul’s eleventh year, 
Dr. Wilcove took him for a drive to Bridgetown, where 
he had to attend a patient. This was an ecstatic occasion. 
Aunt Verona gave him twenty-five cents to buy what¬ 
ever he chose and Dr. Wilcove added a “quarter” for 
candy. Fifty cents! Gee-rusalem! It was more than he 
had ever had to spend, even on Firsts of July. While 
Dr. Wilcove paid his call, Paul wandered through the 
river town inspecting the shops, and finally selected a 
green top, a dozen striped glass marbles, and a “real 
agate” shooter. With the candy quarter he bought a 
mouth-organ and a “souvenir” pen-wiper to present to 
Aunt Verona, whereupon Dr. Wilcove himself went into 
another shop and returned with a bag of sweets, which 
capped the glories of the expedition. 

The return drive, past purple furrows and groves of 
shimmering green hazel, was an uninterrupted delight. 
The little mare knew she was homeward bound and ran 
cheerfully all the way. Dr. Wilcove let Paul hold the 
reins, and told him stories about the deserted farmhouses 
on his route, thrilling him when he pointed out the house 
in which his mother and Aunt Verona had been born. 
Then Dr. Wilcove, in that incorrigible grown-up manner, 
shook his head sadly and remarked, “It might have been 
as famous a house as Sam Slick’s in its way!” Paul was 
too diffident to ask for an explanation, and the doctor’s 
next remark, about “throwing away a career,” got mixed 


SOLO 


29 


up with a clucking noise destined for the ears of the 
little mare. 

The afternoon was drenched as in a deep golden dew 
when they reached the brow of the hill overlooking Hale’s 
Turning. Miss Todd’s house came first into sight. Be¬ 
neath it was the white Baptist church; opposite, the ex¬ 
tensive acres of Dave Ashmill, bounded by a straggling 
cedar hedge. Farther on, the maples and elms and fruit 
trees of the village seemed to be growing in profusion out 
of a huge basket. The river lay beyond the roofs, mud- 
red, streaked with silver, broadening out toward the 
Basin. A wooden barque, her yards all criss-cross, rode 
at anchor near the mill. There were green stretches of 
marsh and pink mud flats too, and a shabby little train 
went rambling and rumbling across a trestle towards the 
long abandoned shipyard and rotting wharves that had 
been constructed by Paul’s grandfather in the days when 
all vessels were made of wood. 

As they descended the hill, with the warm sun in their 
faces, Paul had a strange sensation of ownership in this 
little village, so much more cosy and likeable than the 
bewildering Bridgetown for all its town hall built of 
stone, its brick schoolhouse, and a whole street full of 
shops. Bridgetown was vast and alien and unknowable, 
whereas Hale’s Turning was almost his very own; he 
knew and for the moment loved every square foot of it. 
He knew and loved, as never before, every creature that 
dwelt in it. As they drove past the cedar hedge at the 
foot of the hill he felt he could almost have been friendly 
with John Ashmill, the bully who lived in such grandeur 
behind it. If only the little mare wouldn’t trot so fast 
now! 

Mr. Kestrell’s windmill flashed in the sun. As they 
drove past the brown house, Paul caught a glimpse of 
Walter Dreer, walking along the muddy foot-path. His 
contentment took a more personal turn, leapt to a high 


30 


SOLO 


pitch. That Walter should see him driving in the doc¬ 
tor’s rubber-tyred buggy was gratifying in the extreme. 
From the tail of his eye he tried to detect Walter s envy. 
Then they reached the big bare house, and it was time to 
thank Dr. Wilcove and say good-bye. Aunt Verona had 
rehearsed him in this final speech, and according to in¬ 
structions he added, “Won’t you come in, Dr. Wilcove, 
and have a cup of tea with us ? The doctor declined, 
patted him on the back in a way which made Paul sud¬ 
denly wish he had a father, and drove off. 

Paul lingered at the gate. He was still suffused in his 
sense of contentment, and his heart was beating strangely. 
He felt sure that Walter was walking faster now than 
when they had passed him. In a few seconds Walter 
would reach the gate. Paul pushed it, but as usual it 
stuck. The rusty hinges were as neglected as the garden. 
He gave a harder shove and dropped his bag of marbles. 
If he had been in a hurry he could have picked them up 
before Walter arrived. As it was, the shooter remained 
on the ground. Walter handed it to him with a curious, 
cajoling light in his brown eyes. The sun, shining on his 
eyes, gave them a resemblance to the shooter he was 
holding. 

“Is it an agate?” he ventured, as Paul put it into the 
bag with the others. 

Paul nodded. 

“Get it in Bridgetown?” 

“Yes,” said Paul, and his sense of history in the mak¬ 
ing almost made him choke over the word—the first he 
had addressed to Walter in six months. 

“Got any more?” Walter went on, swinging a jug 
which he was carrying to Mrs. Barker’s for yeast. 

“Only glassies,” Paul replied. 

“Let me see ’em?” 

Walter praised the selection, and tried the green top, 
but the ground was too muddy for a successful spin. 


SOLO 


3 i 


He also ate a piece of candy, and smiled again. Paul 
was in the grip of emotions which made speech 
precarious. 

“I’ll play you allies after supper,” Walter proposed. 
“For lends—not keeps.” 

“Got to practise. Been away all day.” 

“To-morrow, then.” 

“To-morrow’s Sunday.” 

“We can play after Sunday-school, behind the school- 
house. Nobody’ll see.” 

Paul agreed and turned toward the house. Walter 
called him back. 

“I’m sorry I chucked that snowball,” he said. His eyes 
and his smile were evidence that it cost him little to 
apologize. 

Paul stiffened. “What snowball?” he inquired. He 
knew the dissembling was lost on Walter, but he also 
knew that Walter would handle his pride with tact. 
Walter’s tact in the old days had been one of the virtues 
that had made their relation possible. 

“That day I was playing with John,” he explained. 

“What difference does it make to me how much you 
play with John?” 

“He’s awful stupid,” Walter pursued. “I like you 
best.” 

“Then what did you put red ink on my sandwiches 
for?” Paul cried, with a hint of pent-up anguish, where¬ 
upon Walter again smiled his penitence. 

“See you to-morrow, eh?” 

Again Paul nodded and hurried down the unkempt 
path toward the house. Gee-rusalem! 

There was much to tell Aunt Verona about Bridgetown 
and the little mare, and supper in the kitchen was a heart¬ 
warming meal. Aunt Verona listened kindly and was 
pleased with the pen-wiper. But she was dismayed when 
he put down his knife and fork in the middle of supper 


32 


SOLO 


and broke into uncontrollable sobs. He tried to explain, 
but failed. Then Aunt Verona’s hands jerked, her face 
went white, and she made a remark which, by intriguing 
him, restored his self-control. “Happiness is such a rare 
visitor,” she said, “that when it comes it finds us unpre¬ 
pared.’ It’s good to be able to weep.” 


II 


I 

Although Walter and Paul were more inseparable 
than ever, there was a new reserve in Paul’s manner. 
In the bleak six months during which his pride had kept 
him aloof, he had strengthened his fortress. Now he 
peered over the wall and would not be enticed outside by 
anyone who had once succeeded in wounding him. 

This economy of emotion, had he known it, lent a touch 
of the artistic to his personality, a touch which Walter 
had sufficient taste to appreciate. When Walter accused 
John Ashmill of being stupid, he had in mind John’s lack 
of delicacy. The new Paul, more subtly sensitive than 
ever, faintly derisive at times, challenging, less gullible, 
obviously trying to discipline his own excess of gentle¬ 
ness, appealed to Walter’s cajoling nature. 

If Paul had spent the interval in learning arts of re¬ 
pression, Walter had not wasted his time. He had been 
acquiring stores of knowledge which his imagination had 
freely dramatized and which he was eager to display be¬ 
fore an audience capable of appreciating fine shades. 
John Ashmill, among others, had put him on the track of 
discoveries which placed the universe in a new light. 
Hence at twelve Walter was in possession of all the in¬ 
formation—and how much more!—that “a young boy 
ought to know.” 

He had absorbed these facts gladly, but to Paul the 
revelation came with an unutterable sense of horror. For 


33 


34 


SOLO 


years he was destined to struggle with Walter’s facts 
before they would assume their right proportion. His 
lack of animal exuberance made it necessary for him to 
acquire an extensive new acreage of observation before 
the magnitude of the trees of knowledge could be dwarfed 
to normal. Walter was interested in facts per se the 
more deeply dyed the better. Paul, even at the age of 
eleven, was interested in facts per the light they shed on 
the abiding rules of the universe. Night after night, his 
mind fevered with distorted images, he cursed his chum 
for having suggested them. For, more than any facts 
in his life, they seemed to fill the world with discord. 
Nothing had ever flatted as this discovery flatted. At 
first he refused to believe but there was no evading 
Walter’s steady accumulation of proofs. 

The matter was placed beyond dispute by Mark Laval. 
“Why, didn’t you know?” the French boy commented, 
when Paul dared broach the subject. To Mark it was a 
truth as familiar as any other. His indifference had the 
effect of a cooling stream. If Mark, with his riotous 
imagination, could be so casual about the overwhelming 
phenomena of creation, there was surely some hope of a 
balance for Paul. 

More jealously than ever, he guarded the margin of re¬ 
serve in his companionship with Walter. For there 
were still dark wells in his chum’s mind into which he 
steadfastly declined to look. He had learned new ways 
of keeping Walter in place. One of them was to culti¬ 
vate Mark Laval. This was fair retaliation for Walter’s 
association with John Ashmill, since Paul had agreed to 
drop his feud with the bully. Nothing humiliated Walter 
so promptly as a resort on Paul’s part to French, which 
Mark spoke with a strong habitant twang. Walter un¬ 
derstood not a word of what he enviously described as a 
“dirty lingo” and was brought to book by his sense of 
impotence, whereupon Paul’s conscience troubled him at 


SOLO 


35 


the thought that he had yielded again to his besetting sin 
of showing off. 

Paul’s resentment of the new knowledge was at its 
-sharpest when he attempted to reconcile it with the image 
of girls he knew. It made him sorry for nice girls and 
increased his dislike of horrid ones. He sincerely hoped 
Aunt Verona didn’t know—though, being quite old, she 
might have found out by some unlucky accident. Of 
course all married people knew—Paul blushed and 
writhed as the faces of Mrs. Dreer and Mrs. Kestrell 
came before him. 

Walter’s scheme obliged every creature to submit to or 
indulge in nastiness, and Walter found in such a predica¬ 
ment a source of glee! Whereas Paul now looked at his 
girl acquaintances with a haunting pity, as he might 
watch a lamb going up the path to the butcher, Walter 
chortled over the prospect of their fate. Not only that, 
but he kept on the alert for any sign of knowledge on the 
part of the opposite sex, and was never happier than when 
he detected Miss Todd coughing over an equivocal word 
in the Sunday-school lesson. He was highly pleased with 
himself when he perceived that Mrs. Wilcove was going 
to have a baby. ‘‘You wait and see,” he concluded, when 
Paul refused to take his word for it. 

A few days later when Paul called at Mr. Kestrell’s 
workshop to sharpen his knife, he caught a glimpse of 
Gritty and Myrtle Wilcove in the showroom. Gritty was 
stuffing coloured tissue-paper into her pinny and pres¬ 
ently began to strut about the room like an actor made up 
for the part of Falstaff. He heard Myrtle giggle, where¬ 
upon he suddenly blushed and fled, without waiting to 
sharpen his knife. A wave of knowledge seemed to have 
passed over the village like an epidemic. Trust Gritty to 
catch it! 

The blow drove him out into the fields behind Aunt 
Verona’s house. The only secrets left in the whole world 


36 


SOLO 


seemed to be the soft green cushions of moss studded 
with red pins that clung to the roots of the trees. For 
the first time in many months he thought of Leila, and 
was passionately glad that she, for one, had escaped the 
epidemic. 

2 

Gradually the new knowledge ceased to be a wholly 
discordant interruption in the theme of life. At times 
there were notes in this particular movement which still 
seemed to flat hideously, just as there had been chords 
in certain Chopin etudes which had begun by offending 
his ear, but which he had learned to incorporate into a 
wider musical comprehension. On one occasion, when 
John Ashmill boasted of having done indescribable things 
with his cousin Hilda, who lived in Halifax and went to 
a dancing school, the discord had been so great that it 
fairly drowned the theme. But by the time, a few months 
later, that Walter Dreer had come with a similar tale 
involving Bessie Day, a girl whom Paul had always 
thought of as dirty and bold, the class of facts of which 
Walter’s exploit was an example had taken its place as 
mere ornamentation in the pattern, and the theme of life 
was repeating itself triumphantly above the questionable 
harmonies of this latest variation. Paul had reached the 
point where he could make sharp distinctions between 
phenomena such as Mrs. Wilcove s condition and Walter 
Dreer’s iwifHOfidices. The one was clothed in the miracu¬ 
lous, a little ugly, but necessary and condonable; the other 
was on a par with all the things in life one ignored. 

Yet Paul was still under the spell of his chum. After 
all, there were long periods when the lurid subject was 
lost to view in the interest of games and excursions in 
the fields, and even when it recurred Walter could pro¬ 
vide fresh details which filled out gaps in the puzzle. 
Moreover, Walter had become more discreet in impart- 


SOLO 


37 


ing his facts, had lived down his first gloating excite¬ 
ment. He found it more profitable to discuss the world 
within the restrictions which Paul’s instincts made obliga¬ 
tory than with the licence made possible by John Ash- 
mill’s coarseness. For coarseness implied a limitation of 
ideas, the calling of spades spades, the ruling out of all 
the interesting gradations between black and white. 

Although Paul saw with relief that his theme of life 
could hold its own under the intricacies of the new varia¬ 
tion, he found that the upheaval of mind resultant upon 
the discovery of sex had made it necessary to take a new 
cognizance of other phenomena which he had never 
thought to challenge. It was as though van-loads of fur¬ 
niture had arrived at the door of his mind, installation 
of which could be effected only after a wholesale pulling 
down of partitions and the discarding of outworn objects. 
The upheaval had awakened his critical faculty, and he 
found himself watching the world with a growing scepti¬ 
cism and unprecedented shyness. He, who had been the 
hero of all the school-concert tableaux, now actually 
quaked when he walked on the platform. 

It was at this period that Miss Todd offered him the 
post of organist in the church, a post made vacant by the 
marriage and departure of Miss Ranston. The rush of 
surprise and elation, a new sense of importance in the 
community, served for a time to restore his old trustful 
complacency of outlook. He had also increased his prac¬ 
tising to four hours a day, and music absorbed most of 
his surplus energy, physical and mental. 

But under the surface, speculation and mutiny were 
quietly smouldering, and the fond ladies of the village 
who pointed to him as a model of the Christian virtues 
and pagan graces were far from guessing the presence in 
his nature of anything that would make for a conflagra¬ 
tion. Paul himself was just sufficiently aware of his 
own combustibility to keep raking sods over the smoul- 


33 


SOLO 


dering pile. In so doing he for a while deceived even 
himself. 

3 

It was impossible to say exactly when the image of 
Phoebe Meddar began to be a permanent tenant of Paul's 
mind. In the far-off days when he and Leila were moni¬ 
tors together, he had, in the thoroughness of his imagina¬ 
tive arrangements, thought of Phoebe as a sort of sister- 
in-law elect. And since the day of the funeral he had 
always been a little more sharply conscious of Phoebe’s 
presence in the universe than that of other girls—with 
the exception of Gritty, the tomboy, who of course never 
counted. Gritty was a fixture in the universe like himself. 

It was not until five years after the funeral, when 
Leila’s memory had faded into the substance of a dream, 
that Phoebe’s image became insistent. And not until 
a certain summer day when her name was mentioned by 
Walter Dreer did she leap into his heart with full signi¬ 
ficance. From that day, however, her personality revealed 
itself to him as something wondrously sweet, something 
that partook of the nature of violets and pansies and 
roses, as fragrant and as delicate. 

He had never been close enough to Phoebe to ascertain 
whether she smelt of coco-nut cookies. Something in his 
regard for her made him refrain from approaching. For 
one thing, she had a sister who was an angel. It was as 
though Phoebe were a goddess who moved in a faery 
haze which he must not attempt to penetrate. Her 
brother might pull her golden pigtails and elicit musical 
squeals of pain and remonstrance, and Walter Dreer 
might talk about her as though she were like any other 
pretty girl, might even crowd into her corner of the 
Sunday-school vestry and roll his eyes at her, but for 
Paul it was an awe-inspiring privilege to live in the same 


SOLO 


39 


world as Phoebe. He gave humble thanks that he could 
see her walking on the opposite side of the road or know 
she was in the family pew hearing the music he made 
for her. 

Often in the summer afternoons or before falling asleep 
at night he would be suffused with a sense of well-being 
that recalled the afternoon of his drive with Dr. Wilcove. 
And in all such moments a vision of Phoebe Meddar came 
before him, a tranquil vision in ivory and gold, with eyes 
of gentian blue and a little tight pink smile. 

Phoebe was a year younger than he, and a grade lower 
at school. This gave him a sense of seniority. His re¬ 
gard for her was at times paternal, always protective. 
The heavenly hosts had lost their glamour. He was be¬ 
ginning to be sceptical of the pearl and jasper, the pave¬ 
ments of gold. There was something second-rate about 
the glory of abandoning a Bechstein concert piano on 
earth for a measly harp on high. But his nature still 
yearned after the ineffable, yearned all the more by rea¬ 
son of the disintegration of his heavenly visions, and 
before he knew it Phoebe was a sort of living angel in 
an earthly paradise from which he was excluded, but of 
which it was his lot to catch radiant glimpses. 

The only sign that his regard for Phoebe bordered on 
the terrestrial was a growing dislike for Walter Dreer’s 
society. He hated Walter when he spoke of Phoebe 
Meddar as ‘‘darn good-looking” or wondered whether 
Phoebe would be “game.” Gritty Kestrell, champion of 
truth at any price, once said right out that Phoebe was 
Walter’s “girl.” Walter acknowledged the impeachment 
with an easy smile, for which Paul gave him another 
black mark. For he knew that Phoebe disapproved of 
Walter. He had seen her shrink when Walter had tried 
by ruse to obtain her as partner at Myrtle Wilcove’s 
birthday party. The ruse had been discovered in time 
and the girls had finally drawn lots for partners and were 


4 o 


SOLO 


called into a room one by one and cross-examined by 
the assembly, whose duty it was to establish the identity 
of the partners by eliciting descriptive details in three 
queries. Phoebe, by some miracle, had drawn the slip 
bearing Paul’s name, as he guessed from a sudden demure 
glance she directed at him, and he waited with studied 
negligence and wild pulses. 

“What colour is his hair?” inquired the first questioner 
in the circle, as the assembly sucked their lead pencils in 
anticipation of guessing the name. 

“Black,” Phoebe promptly replied. 

“What colour are his eyes?” demanded the next. 

Phoebe was lost. She had to think. “Uh—blue. Pm 
not sure,” she finally pronounced. 

Paul’s eyes were black as coals, but the vicissitudes of 
childhood had already inured him to the pain of wounded 
vanity, and his adoration was proof against his goddess’s 
carelessness in matters of observation. Besides, from her 
pew she saw more of the back of his head than she did 
of his face. He quite forgave her shortcoming when, 
at the close of the game, she evinced no reluctance at 
joining hands with him for the “Ring around the Rosy.” 
The outstanding fact was that she had avoided Walter, 
and yet Walter could smile confidently when Gritty spoke 
of Phoebe as his girl. The world was like that. 

The night before the Sunday-school picnic Walter told 
Paul of a rose garden which flourished in the Ashmill 
grounds. He proposed that they make a raid on it. 
“Girls like ’em,” Walter said vaguely. Paul waived his 
scruples in the excitement of adventure, and they set 
forth. 

“You go and get ’em,” Walter suggested when they 
stood before the Ashmill cedar hedge. “I’ll be sentinel.” 

This was an irregular suggestion, since Walter had 
proposed the expedition. But Paul made no demur, lest 
Walter should suspect that he dreaded the dark. Walter 


SOLO 


4i 


whispered directions concerning a particular bush of pink 
tea-roses. 

“Get four or five,” he instructed. 

The grass was damp and the earth loose under Paul’s 
feet. The grounds stretched darkly away toward the 
orange windows of the Ashmill house, partly concealed 
behind black clumps of shrubbery. He crept beside the 
bushes, starting at vague sounds. His nerves were pre¬ 
pared for anything that might come bounding out at him. 
A dog’s bark would have been welcome, for it would have 
dispelled the weird silence. Walter would not have un¬ 
derstood his fears—no other boy would have—only he 
was afraid of the dark, and no one in the world must 
ever suspect. 

The air was heavy with a nameless blend of odours. 
He closed his eyes and pictured Phoebe Meddar, white 
and gold, blue and pink, fresh, cool and mysterious. The 
tea-roses were in the farthermost corner. Dewdrops ran 
down his sleeve as he cut the stems. Thorns pricked his 
wrists. One, two, three, four, and a lovely bud. It 
seemed a pity, but there were hundreds left. He stole 
back and presented his flowers in timorous triumph. 
Walter concealed them under his coat and they regained 
the road. 

Before Walter’s gate they made an arrangement to 
meet early in the morning, then said good night. 

“I’d like to have the bud,” Paul said, as Walter closed 
the gate. 

Walter detached the bud from the bouquet and Paul 
ran home. 

In the morning Walter failed to appear at the rendez¬ 
vous and Mrs. Dreer said he had already gone to the 
post office, where the waggons were to start. With the 
rose-bud and a picnic basket in his hand, Paul hurried to 
the post office. Among the boys and girls already as¬ 
sembled he detected the form of Phoebe Meddar. She 


42 


SOLO 


stood there with the pale morning light gilding Her pig¬ 
tails. Her head was bare, for Gritty Kestrell was trying 
on Phoebe’s new leghorn hat trimmed with heliotrope 
ribbon. Gritty’s passion for dressing up was one of the 
few weaknesses that betrayed her sex. Ever since she 
had seen Uncle Toni’s Cabin she had shown a tendency 
to strut about as Topsy or Aunt Ophelia. She could also 
impersonate Miss Todd singing her solos, and was par¬ 
ticularly successful as Pokey Ned, the village idiot. 

Walter was playing marbles with Bob Meddar and 
Skinny Wiggins. Paul was about to hurry forward with 
his rosebud and slip it into Phoebe’s hand while the others 
were watching Gritty’s antics, when Phoebe leaned down 
toward her basket and picked up a bouquet that was 
resting on it—a bouquet of four tea-roses—and buried 
her nose in it. 

Paul swung on his heel. 

Aunt Verona was astonished to see him. She knew 
how eagerly he had been looking forward to the trip to 
Slate Beach and hoarding pennies for ice-cream. 

“I’m not going,” he said, and Aunt Verona took the 
basket without further inquiry. 

“I’ll tell you what,” she proposed. “Let’s you and I 
have a picnic all by ourselves in the field by the brook. 
I’ll make some doughnut men and animals.” 

He acquiesced with as much enthusiasm as he could 
muster, for he realized that Aunt Verona, in offering to 
go as far as the field, was making an unprecedented con¬ 
cession to comfort him, and he felt he ought to support 
her effort. But in the playroom, with the door shut, he 
leaned forward on the keyboard of the big piano and 
wept. 

4 

Although Paul continued on friendly terms with Walter 
Dreer, he contrived to see less of him, and only his dis- 


SOLO 


43 


trust of his own stubbornness saved him from a repeti¬ 
tion of the old wordless estrangement. During the 
remainder of the summer vacation he divided his time 
between music and reading. His progress in the former 
was becoming rapid as his hands grew broader, and the 
excitement of being able to play Chopin scherzos , which 
Aunt Verona assured him nobody in Hale’s Turning 
and very few people even in Halifax could have played, 
made him willing to practise five or six hours a day. In 
consideration of this extra application he was relieved 
of all household tasks, and even abandoned Mr. Silva’s 
cow. 

Aunt Verona had had Mr. Silva bring down a crate 
of books from the attic to swell the list in the playroom. 
There were novels and collections of poetry in German 
and French and English, text-books on harmony, trea¬ 
tises in philosophy, books of memoirs—a stimulating mis¬ 
cellany. On the title-page of a beautifully bound volume 
entitled Confessions d’un Vieux Musicien, there was an 
inscription which read: “A la gracieuse Verona Windell, 
souvenir amical et affectueux de Vauteur, qui n’oubliera 
jamais ces soirees de Munich et de Vienne. A Vadmirable 
artiste tout bonheur et tout sue ces!” 

Here was a field rich in possibilities. Yet he knew that 
a direct question would merely have the effect of vexing 
Aunt Verona or driving her into one of her brooding 
reveries. It was thrilling to learn that Aunt Verona had 
known a musician who had written a book, thrilling to 
know that she had been a person of consequence in Mu¬ 
nich and Vienna, thrilling to know that she had been 
thought of as an admirable artist. He knew that Aunt 
Verona could play superbly, though he had never heard 
her, except for occasional phrases when she was teaching 
him how to produce certain effects. It was all intrigu¬ 
ing and heart-warming, and with glowing eyes he 
plunged into the volume, taking care to read it in the play- 


44 


SOLO 


room so that Aunt Verona’s attention should not be at¬ 
tracted to the inscription on the title-page. It might 
arouse some disagreeable memory, and he wished to avoid 
that, for she had been unnaturally depressed for several 

weeks. . 

It was a dull book, except for the parts in which the 
author spoke of composing symphonies and travelling 
over Europe to conduct them. There were grand pages 
relating his triumphs, and touching accounts of his dis¬ 
appointments and the treachery of his colleagues. 

Then there came a page of crashing, glittering splen¬ 
dour— a page that set Paul’s heart beating and wrapped 
his immediate world in a magic scarf. For he read: 
“It was at this selfsame concert that the public of Vienna 
first heard the young Canadian pianist, Mile. Verona 
Winded, who performed the Schumann concerto in a 
manner that aroused the highest pitch of interest and 
curiosity. This artist undoubtedly has a brilliant future. 
As for my own concertos, not even Clara Schumann has 
played them with a finer sense of proportion and a more 
appealing charm. Mile. Winded is of that rare company 
of musicians who abandon themselves to the composition 
in hand, without trickery, without ceremony, so that it 
becomes for the moment the channel for the deepest res¬ 
ervoirs of feeling of which the human organism is 
capable. Such artists should never be constrained to in¬ 
terpret petty music. Their energies need to be conserved 
for the great works.” 

With the open book in his hand and his eyes as widely 
open as the pages, Paul passed down the playroom into 
the kitchen. It was ad very wed to repress one’s wonder¬ 
ment about Aunt Verona on ordinary occasions, but this 

Aunt Verona paused in the act of wringing out a 
dish-cloth, and her face tightened as she saw the eager 
inquiry in Paul’s eyes. 


SOLO 


45 


“What have you there ?” she asked, coming to meet 
him and reaching for the book with wet hands. She 
glanced at the page, pressed her lips together, snapped 
the covers to, and placed the volume on the table. 

“Aunt Verona—” Paul commenced tentatively, and 
waited. 

“That’s a silly book, child,” she said, trying to keep 
a harsh note out of her voice. “I’d rather you didn’t read 
it . . . Run out and play a while before the sun goes 
down.” 

Reluctantly, Paul left the room, giving an apprehensive 
glance over his shoulder at the crate on the floor with 
its scores of books in disorderly array. His apprehension 
clung to him out of doors, and he sat on a chopping block 
by the woodshed, wondering and wondering. 

A few moments later his attention was caught by the 
changed colour and increased volume of smoke issuing 
from the chimney. He ran back and peeked into the 
kitchen. Aunt Verona had five or six books in her 
apron and was stuffing pages and bindings into the stove 
with the poker. She was muttering to herself, so en¬ 
grossed in destruction that she failed to observe the in¬ 
truder. 

When the last volume in her apron was disposed of, she 
replaced the kettle over the flames, and Paul stole away 
to the woodyard, frightened, outraged, and sad. Life 
had gone terribly off-key again, and this time it was Aunt 
Verona who had deliberately played a false chord in her 
own theme. He was sure that many precious clues had 
been consumed in the flames, many an enchanting tale ir¬ 
revocably pressed back by Aunt Verona’s drawn lips. 
It was small consolation that thirty or forty books had 
been spared. None of them, he felt, would breathe any 
hint of a more personal significance than ordinary books; 
their title-pages would be without penned inscriptions. 

One volume from the crate he had brought away in 


SOLO 


46 

his pocket, a tiny German book with small print and a 
miniature wall-paper pattern inside its flexible covers. 
It was called Die Leiden des jungen Wert her. He found 
a comfortable seat on the pile of cord-wood and began 
to read. 

5 

Paul’s hopeless wonderment regarding Aunt Verona 
added to the weight of hopeless love for Phoebe Meddar 
and the weight of Walter’s betrayal pressed heavily on 
his mind. Fortunately his long hours at the piano and 
organ, the choir rehearsals at Miss Todd’s, and his liter¬ 
ary treasure-trove gave him the opportunity of merging 
his perplexities in an endless stream of fancy. Music 
was the most satisfactory outlet. He could even im¬ 
agine, for instance, that he was Mile. Verona Windell, 
and that the chairs and engravings in the playroom were 
the rapt and gaping citizens of Vienna. A yellow silk 
handkerchief tied round his head unaccountably height¬ 
ened the illusion. 

Or, when that role palled, he could imagine he was a 
grown-up Monsieur Minas, playing sonatas which he had 
made out of his own head, and that his audience was 
Mile. Phoebe Meddar, a charming young lady from Can¬ 
ada whose pale gold hair and heliotrope gowns were the 
admiration of swarthy foreigners. At the end of the 
piece, when Mile. Meddar had expressed her approval and 
averted her violet-blue eyes, he would lean forward and 
whisper, “Ah, my dear Mademoiselle Meddar, I am go¬ 
ing to write a beautiful book, and on the front page I 
will write an inscription to you. Never shall I forget our 
evenings together in Munich and Vienna.” 

And Mile. Meddar would reply,“Oh, Monsieur Minas, 
will you?” 

With the reopening of school in September, Mark 
Laval made his reappearance. He had shot up and 


SOLO 


47 


spread out, and in his coating of tan looked like some 
great shaggy dog. His eyes Paul observed for the first 
time—with a sudden realization of the oversight, he 
smiled subtly at his recent condemnation of Phoebe’s 
carelessness with respect to his own eyes. One of the 
books in Aunt Verona’s box had been called Les Fleurs 
du Mai, a series of poems for the most part incompre¬ 
hensible. In one poem about a cat, he had been struck 
by the description of the animal’s eyes—“a mixture of 
metal and agate.” That was the quality of Mark Laval’s 
eyes. They magnetized your gaze and then, like a clair¬ 
voyant’s crystal, held it in focus. But unlike the eyes of 
Baudelaire’s cat, Mark’s eyes were kind and loyal, even 
when his words were unyielding. 

Coming into Paul’s lonely and abstracted mood, Mark 
was doubly welcome. He walked home with Paul after 
the first morning at school, which had been devoted to an 
announcement of the year’s programme of studies. 
Mark, despite his bare thirteen years, was almost grown¬ 
up, and in his presence Paul felt small, yet singularly se¬ 
cure, as secure as he had felt with Mr. Silva. The sum¬ 
mer in camp had increased the older boy’s awkwardness, 
without diminishing his intensity. A certain moodiness, 
however, like a dark cloud, had settled over him, making 
Paul feel his forlornness more acutely than ever. It 
was to be Mark’s last year at school, and already he 
foretasted the exclusion which withdrawal from his 
schoolmates must entail for him. He was like a strong 
swimmer setting out towards the open sea knowing the 
waters must ultimately close over his head. 

With a blunt thumb and a blunt forefinger Mark 
turned the pages of a characteristically grubby copy of 
Evangeline and read aloud from it. His voice and his 
belief in the poetry had the effect of transforming a sing¬ 
song tale into a glowing apotheosis of sentiment. At 
school Paul had taken slight interest in the tame Acadian 


SOLO 


48 

lovers who had lived at Grand-Pre, only a few miles dis¬ 
tant from Hale’s Turning, but under the spell of Mark’s 
enthusiasm the old Norman days came to life and re¬ 
minded him of his hereditary interest in their fate. 

“Has a funny effect on you, poetry,” Mark ventured, 
when the book had been closed and they were seated 
under the cherry tree in Aunt Verona’s orchard. “Makes 
you feel sort of—more alive but all weak and runny 
too.” 

“And sad,” added Paul. 

“But nice sad—not gloomy.” 

“No, not gloomy. It’s like music, kind of. Makes 
you feel serious but excited—and ready for something 
to happen . . . which usually doesn’t,” he added with 
precocious cynicism. 

“Like cryin’ because you’re happy, the way women 
do.” 

“Men too, sometimes.” 

“I never seen a man cry.” 

“Werther did—often.” 

“Who’s he?” 

“In a German book. He killed himself at the end.” 

“You stay in Purgatory if you do that.” 

“Oh, pooh! That’s what the priests say.” 

“Well, they know.” 

“You think they do, you mean. There’s another thing 
I read, in a French book, that said something about 
priests in poetry. I remembered to tell you. It said: 

“Les pretres ne sont pas ce qu’un vain peuple pense, 

Notre credulite fait toute leur science.” 

“Must a been a book of sin.” 

“Oh, you say that because you’re narrow-minded. All 
Catholics are narrow-minded.” 

“Are they! What about you? You’re narrow- 


SOLO 


49 


minded for runnin’ down Catholics. You think you’re 
right about everything just because you’re rich.” 

Paul was as snobbish as most boys of eleven, but he 
was also truthful. John Ashmill’s father was rich, but 
to think of himself as rich was the height of absurdity. 

“I am not,” he contradicted. 

‘‘Yes you are,” Mark insisted. “You own this house 
and a ship and the wharf and lots of things.” 

Paul laughed at his friend’s ignorance. “My father 
did, but he’s been dead ten years. He died at sea with 
yellow fever.” 

“Sure, and he left everything to your mother. When 
she died she left everything to you. There wasn’t no¬ 
body else. It’s all yours now.” 

“It is not.” Paul had nothing to go by but a sense 
of the grotesqueness of his owning anything so big and 
useless. “He left me the gold watch that the queen gave 
him, but I’m not to have it till I can play the Liszt 
sonata.” 

“You ask Miss Winded.” 

Paul considered this. It would do no harm to ask 
Aunt Verona, and he certainly meant to. But he pre¬ 
ferred to wait, for in the event of her saying yes he would 
lose the argument, which would be humiliating. 

“I have to practise now,” he finally announced. 

Mark’s appreciation of his music was the corner-stone 
of their friendship, and his eyes now dwelt on Paul in a 
sort of wistful envy, free from any taint of grudge. 

“Can I stay here and listen?” he asked. 

Paul melted. He could concede even an argument to 
such an eager friend. “Sure you can,” he said, ‘if you 
want to.” 

“Play the Impromptu,” Mark coaxed. 

“The Schubert in A-flat?” Paul inquired. He could¬ 
n’t resist this little parade of specialized lore. 

“Yes—all runny.” 


50 


SOLO 


“Oh, it’s easy,” Paul deprecated. “I know dozens of 
things harder than that.” 

“I like it,” Mark insisted. “Play it—go on.” 

“It’s rather monotonous—too much repeating.” 

He closed the door behind him with an elation he 
wouldn’t have betrayed to Mark for worlds, and pro¬ 
ceeded to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. Aunt 
Verona was mending stockings. 

“Aunt Verona, Mark Laval says I own a ship and a 
shipyard. I don’t, do I?” 

She waited a moment, then replied: 

“Don’t let people put notions into your head. Here 
are some cookies before you practise.” 

Paul blushed. He was thinking of the notions Walter 
had put into his head. 

At the open window of the playroom he tossed a cookie 
out to his friend, who was pulling at the grass. You re 
wrong, Mark,” he whispered, ‘‘about the ships and things. 
I asked my aunt.” 

Mark merely shook his head in indulgent contradic¬ 
tion, accommodating the cookie in two bites. 

“Play the Impromptu,” he returned. 

6 

The opening of the crate of books had consequences 
more far-reaching than Paul could have foreseen. From 
the day when Aunt Verona had consigned the souvenir 
volumes to the fire, the disconcerting blank moods had 
gained a new ascendancy. With increasing frequency 
and at the most unexpected moments she repaired to the 
playroom to stare unseeingly through the window. She 
confused the days, too, and spoke German oftener than 
French. Occasionally she disappeared upstairs and Paul, 
listening breathlessly, could hear the faint rumbling of 
drawers, the shutting down of boxes, the crunching of 


SOLO 


5i 


keys in rusty locks. But Aunt Verona collected texts 
with the same meaningless precision, and there were now 
two drawers overflowing with the bescribbled scraps of 
paper. 

As the winter advanced a new habit was formed. Aunt 
Verona took to writing at a furious rate on sheets of 
foolscap. At times her ideas lagged and she would sit 
staring at the paper in an abstraction which was proof 
against even the smell of burning bread. Paul found 
himself saddled with a new responsibility regarding the 
proper running of the small menage. When Aunt 
Verona’s ideas failed her, she would end by locking 
away the sheets of foolscap in the dresser. Perhaps five 
minutes later, as she was carrying a kettle from stove to 
sink, the recalcitrant ideas would come to her, where¬ 
upon she would abandon the task in hand, bring out the 
foolscap, and commence scribbling. 

One evening after supper, when she had left her seat 
at the kitchen table to consult a dictionary in the play¬ 
room, Paul looked up from his arithmetic exercise and 
glanced at the sentences on her page. He succeeded in 
reading this: 

“But Heinrich, though he could feel that one was an 
artist in every fibre, would never have understood how 
one might be so thoroughly and abysmally an artist as 
to be unable to succeed in art, once one’s faith in one’s 
higher ego were jeopardized. For him the fulfilment 
of an artistic aim would be gaged by public proclamation 
that the aim had been fulfilled, by public recognition of 
mere dexterity, or whatever. For the motto ‘To thine 
own self be true’ he would have substituted ‘To the 
world’s preconception of you, be true.’ Art for him 
was a compromise between the individual and the com¬ 
munity, just as his status was a compromise between the 
monarchical whip-hand and the grovelling of the masses, 
their willing or unwilling allegiance to his numbskull sire. 


52 


SOLO 


In a sense his myopia was less ridiculous than my ideal¬ 
ism. He at any rate was under no illusions as to his 
inherent princeliness, whereas I most whole-souledly was. 
And my belief in his inherent princeliness, my devout, 
mad, piteous belief in it superseded and gradually stran¬ 
gled my belief in my singleness of purpose, in my—God 
save the mark—genius. He considered himself a prince 
because he was the son, the grandson, the great-grand¬ 
son, the nephew, the cousin of kings, and for no other 
reason. For me he would have been a prince had I met 
him mounting guard at the palace gates instead of min¬ 
gling with guests of State. Whereas had I come to him 
unheralded, with nothing but my belief in myself to sup¬ 
port whatever grace God had given me and a French 
dressmaker had accentuated, who knows ’ 

Aunt Verona’s step cut short the surreptitious perusal, 
and Paul glued his eyes on his task. The ciphers swam, 
and the exercise became abracadabra. He wondered and 
wondered, until the mystery and the glamour emanating 
from the end of Aunt Verona’s stubby pencil became a 
positive pain. His cheeks were flushed and his head 
ached. On the blurred page of his arithmetic, in the 
softly yellow circle of light made by the kerosene lamp, 
he saw a youthful version of Aunt Verona gowned in 
“white samite, mystic, wonderful,” curtsying to a blonde 
youth in gold braid, with ribbons and medals on his breast 
and a gleaming sword at his side. He saw her pale and 
pretty, with the faint, serious smile modifying the auster¬ 
ity of her face, sitting at a long piano, while in curved 
ranks, beyond shiny spaces of floor, under millions of 
glittering prisms, flanked by mirrors and marble columns, 
in a warm flood of perfume, potentates and bejewelled 
ladies listened spellbound to the fabulous strains of the 
Liszt sonata. He saw the arms fall away from the 
piano, he saw the young artist lift a red rose from the 
lid and carry it to her lips, he heard complimentary mur- 


SOLO 


53 


murs and the patter of white gloves, he saw the blonde 
prince advancing across the shiny space- 

Suddenly he broke the spell and cast a furtive glance 
toward the end of the table. There was Aunt Verona, 
quite old-looking, over forty, her dark eyes burning, her 
face drained of colour, her lips tightly pressed together, 
her grey-streaked hair parted in a manner that recalled 
the picture of the lady who had written Daniel Deronda, 
her figure muffled in a green woollen dressing-jacket, her 
cramped, cold, scarred, veined, nervous, bony fingers 
racing across the page. 

He got up from his seat and went to throw himself 
down on a sofa in the dark playroom. His departure 
was unnoticed. Life was vast and terrifying: a great 
stormy adventure illuminated by brief flashes which only 
accentuated the blackness. One would go on groping, 
always groping, for ever and ever, alone. An endless 
fugue that got harder and harder to play. One could not 
hope even to trace the line of the theme, much less master 
the intricacies of subsidiary voices. 

To-night he knew he would have to keep his back 
pressed against the wall all the way up the dark stairs, 

7 

When Aunt Verona was not given over to the fever 
of writing, she moved about in a cloud, working me¬ 
chanically, or staring through the playroom window at 
nothing. In bewildering sallies she emerged from her 
abstraction and returned to the old routine, making hot 
scones, mending stockings and mittens, sweeping, polish¬ 
ing, dusting, asking questions, and presiding over the 
early-morning music lesson. These intervals, however, 
found Paul unresponsive, for he had adapted his manner 
to Aunt Verona’s growing impersonality and found it 
difficult to step out of his shell without warning. 

Thrown on his own resources, he had become preco- 



54 


SOLO 


ciously self-sufficing, and as his mind became more and 
more stocked with images from books—books like Can - 
dide, Vanity Fair, Eugenie Grandet, Heinrich von Of ter - 
dingen. The Last Days of Pompeii, Adam Bede, Hypa¬ 
tia, The Light of Asia , Knight Errant, The First Violin, 
Ben Hur —he found that life was changing from a fixed 
thing, as it appeared on the afternoon when he had driv¬ 
en into Hale’s Turning with Dr. Wilcove, into a shift¬ 
ing drama, with ever new characters and settings. Even 
customs and institutions which he had always thought 
of as irreproachable, and in their nature immutable, he 
found were arbitrary. Everything under the sun, he 
made out, was challengeable. 

At first this truth made him hold to his surroundings 
to see if he was steady. But as his critical faculty spread 
tentative wings a little thrill went through him, and he 
surmised that life was going to consist in an endless flit¬ 
ting, a long quest for the honey of truth, broken by inter¬ 
vals of recreation in the choicest flower-beds. 

As a small child he had felt that all the security and 
permanence of life were harboured within Aunt Verona’s 
kitchen and his playroom and bedroom. Now the gaunt 
old house was becoming an abode of ghostly ideas, and he 
saw it as a waning phase in the progress of his life, a 
single variation of the big theme, while a richer security, 
the culminating variations were to be sought outside this 
house, outside this village, beyond the farthest horizon. 
The value of life would be great or small in the measure 
that one’s faring forth in search of its treasures were 
bold or timid. In exalted moments, moments when the 
truths buried in books came out of their graves to dazzle 
him with an astral radiance, he promised himself that he 
would fly carefully, but high and far. And his smould¬ 
ering scepticism, the concealed sparks that ever gnawed 
at the roots of his daily habits, gave signs of bursting 
through in flame. So far the fire was known only to 


SOLO 


55 


himself, and he still made a point of raking dead leaves 
over the scorched roots. He was too conscious of his 
weakness to risk provoking opposition as yet, but the day 
would come—of that he was confident—and he went back 
to his books and solitary dialogues with renewed concen¬ 
tration. 

The only outward sign of a growing self-reliance was 
a new indifference to companionship of the only sort 
available. Even his regard for Phoebe Meddar became a 
half symbolic sentiment which played the role of a kindly 
moon as contrasted with the burnished sun of his men¬ 
tal activity. He could dispense with the society of boys 
who had had little to offer in return for the painstaking 
efforts he had made to get on a footing with them. He 
no longer hovered on the edge of the circle. He drew 
a circle of his own, somewhat superciliously, and with a 
tinge of bitterness noticed that no one but Mark Laval 
sought the privilege of stepping inside its circumference 
—Mark whose value was largely discounted, even while 
it was enhanced, by his uncritical devotion. Not even 
Mark could reach the centre of the circle, and Paul often 
voluntarily stepped over the line, carrying his best ideas 
into a territory more accessible to his uncouth friend. 
In this act he was making a sincere attempt to live down 
an accusation of Mark’s which he had at first resented; 
his wider reading had proved to him not only that he 
had been narrow-minded, as Mark had alleged, but that 
the gaining of the whole world was positively contingent 
upon his becoming broad-minded. He felt like a mole, 
burrowing steadily towards the light, yet still embedded 
in deep strata of inherited prejudice. His only tools 
were his critical claws, and he dug the more fiercely to 
sharpen them. 

There had been some talk of his entering a Baptist 
preparatory school in Wolfville. At first he had favoured 
the project, welcoming the breath of adventure implied 


SOLO 


56 

in a change of scene and neighbours. On reflection it 
occurred to him that Wolfville must be only a sort of 
glorified Hale’s Turning, that the very safety and regu¬ 
larity implied in Dr. Wilcove’s partisan approval of the 
school in question augured ill for one’s chances of find¬ 
ing therein companions akin to the stimulating people in 
books. Dr. Wilcove was kind but Dr. Wilcove was an 
usher and dearly loved that moment when it was time to 
get up and pass the plate—a moment which Paul had 
grown to despise. He had learned, aided, as always, 
by hints from Aunt Verona, that mere showing-off can 
become mortally dull and barren. He was suffering from 
the reaction of a long exhibition of virtuosity. Doxol- 
ogies and postludes had grown sour, like milk, from 
standing still; his responses in Sunday-school had become 
parrot-like; his intimate relationship with the Holy Ghost 
was extinct. He could therefore muster little enthusiasm 
for the proposed school on the ground of its being a con¬ 
tinuance of the traditions of the family set. Rather than 
sink into that bog he would shock the village by subscrib¬ 
ing to Mark Laval’s arguments in favour of the college 
of St. Francis Xavier. After all, what he objected to in 
Dr. Wilcove’s proposal was precisely what Mark had 
objected to in his former cocksure assertions: namely, 
complacency and a casual assumption of infallibility. 
“Anything for a change,” was his motto for the time be¬ 
ing, but the change must be real and not merely ap¬ 
parent. 

8 

Becky States, the black washerwoman, had come to 
live in the house as general servant. Dr. Wilcove had 
insisted on the arrangement and the decision was arrived 
at one cold day in January when Paul had come in for 
his skates to find Aunt Verona flushed and strangely 
tense, in conference with the doctor. The latter was pre- 


SOLO 


57 


paring to leave, and while Paul was on the porch putting 
new laces in his skating boots he overheard their final 
remarks. 

“But your nerves will have to pay for it in the end,” 
the doctor was expostulating. “Neuralgia will then be 
the very least of your troubles. There’s no such thing 
in nature as utter inflexibility.” 

“Nuns fret not at their convents’ narrow room,” Aunt 
Verona commented in a brittle tone. 

“Ah, but you do fret without knowing it. It’s like 
bleeding inwardly. Besides, you’re the last woman who 
should ever have dreamed of turning your back on life.” 

“I gave it a trial.” 

“Not a fair one. You dived into a shallow pool, 
stunned yourself, then concluded that the pool had been 
deep and that you had been stunned through incom¬ 
petent diving—which is grossly unjust to yourself. Since 
then, by disdaining little pools and shrinking from big 
ones, you’ve shirked the issues of life. Be warned while 
there’s still time.” 

When Paul returned from skating two or three hours 
later, he paused at the gate, thinking he had heard the 
sound of a piano. But he doubted his ears, for they tin¬ 
gled from the cold wind on the frozen marsh ponds, and 
the sound might have been a distant sleigh-ball or the 
clinking of skates slung over his shoulder. He hurried 
down the icy board-walk to the kitchen door, stood still 
a moment to listen, then though the window saw Aunt 
Verona lighting the lamp. 

It was Friday night and he had to hurry through sup¬ 
per in order not to be late for choir practice. He was tired 
after the afternoon’s exercise and would have preferred 
to sit at home with a book. He could play the silly an¬ 
thems at sight and resented the necessity of going over 
and over the separate parts to accommodate tenors and 
contraltos whose musicianship was of the hit-or-miss 


SOLO 


58 

variety. Mr. Silva was the only member of the choir 
who invariably sang the right note. Even Miss Todd— 
whom Walter Dreer spoke of as “gurgling Gertrude” 
—fumbled for the notes when sight-reading and beat 
time with her head. There was one point—-E or E- 
s h ar p—where her voice passed without warning from 
molten brass into brass wire, and if the finale of her solo 
called for a sudden jump to G-sharp or A she trembled 
for a moment like a distraught hot-water pipe, then 
emitted the same sort of pinched moan—sometimes pain¬ 
fully faint, sometimes squawkingly shrill. When her 
solos were written higher than usual, Paul mercifully 
transposed the music without her knowledge. He could¬ 
n’t transpose the anthems, because then the bassos got 
beyond their depth; besides, Mr. Silva always knew when 
one took liberties with the key. 

It was time Miss Todd gave place to a new soloist, 
but nobody had the nerve to tell her so, for she was 
sweet and gentle. Moreover, it was time he chucked 
his job, and some bright morning he would. Already 
he could hear the minister say in his oily voice, “Why, 
what now, my little man!” Little man—Gee-rusalem! 
In church, as soon as he had memorized the text, he 
fooled everybody by reading books behind a high choir 
seat—books that would have horrified the minister’s 
wife. 

Sunday-school was becoming intolerable too. Year 
in and year out, the same cycle of lessons and golden- 
texts, with an attempt to enliven the dreary proceedings 
by coloured cards and chalk pictures of lilies on the 
blackboard. Decidedly he had outgrown it, as he had 
outgrown everything else in this sleepy village. There 
wasn’t a grown-up in Hale’s Turning who had read books 
like Werther! 

He was developing the habit of playing hookey. One 
morning, instead of going to school, he and Gritty had 


SOLO 


59 


pooled their savings, sneaked into the train, and gone to 
Bridgetown to see a thrilling matinee performance of 
Hazel Kirke. During the return journey they had stood 
on the platform and each smoked half a Sweet Caporal. 
Gritty had even suggested that they should run away 
and go on the stage. 

As the winter progressed and the long thaw set in, 
Aunt Verona’s time was almost wholly devoted to her 
manuscripts. Becky was in control, and her unearthly 
growls and rich baritone bursts of song brought an un¬ 
accountable note of cheer into the depression of the 
house. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile/’ 
Becky would drone as she scrubbed, and once Aunt Ver¬ 
ona looked up to exclaim, with an old-time gleam of hu¬ 
mour, “Mercy, Becky, what a gloomy tune!” 

But Becky, who was a law unto herself, went on, de 
plus belle, “a long ways from ho-o-ome, a long wa-ays 
from home.” It was plain to her, as it was to Paul, that 
Aunt Verona liked the song. Besides, Becky’s lugubrious¬ 
ness was one of Hale’s Turning’s stock diversions. Its 
comic value was enhanced by the long glass prisms hang¬ 
ing from her ears and resting on her calico shoulders. 

One morning in April, after weeks of wind and rain, a 
flicker of sunlight broke through the clouds and a breeze 
stole into the village with the news that Spring was com¬ 
ing. The trees whispered the message; the sparrows, 
eavesdropping in their branches, overheard it and flew up 
and down and around in excitement. Paul guessed it and 
ran out of the house, brandishing his book-bag and leap¬ 
ing high over the mud-puddles. Aunt Verona must have 
known it too, with the experience of many a barren 
change of season. She had spent a sleepless night and 
was suffering with neuralgia, an ailment of long-stand¬ 
ing. When Becky had cleared the breakfast table, Aunt 
Verona went into the playroom and stood at the window 
to wave Paul the usual good-bye. The trees in the neg- 


6 o 


SOLO 


lected orchard were palely gilded. The clouds above were 
being rolled back like some billowing curtain in order that 
the sun might have full play upon the vast stage where the 
annual drama of creation was commencing. Over the 
fields there was a faint green halo of growth. In a few 
weeks the trees would be spilling over with leaves and 
blossoms; summer would come at one stride, then autumn 
with its fruits, and winter again with its blizzards and 
silences and delays—world without end, Amen. Nature 
was showing off to-day, Nature the virtuoso. The gen¬ 
ius of God was putting to the blush anything man might 
hope to accomplish. 

When Paul passed through the gate on his breathless 
return for dinner, he stopped short in amazement. This 
time there was no mistaking his ears, and he went around 
to the orchard side of the house and listened under the 
playroom window. 

Great chords were tumbling forth with a profusion be¬ 
yond anything he had ever heard. From the idiom of 
the music he recognized it as Beethoven, but it was as 
though the instrument—his child piano—had grown up 
and burst into song with the deep-throated voice of ma¬ 
turity The music screamed, roared, rumbled, pleaded, 
wailed grieved, sighed, and suddenly subsided to a sing¬ 
ing plaintiveness. His heart was in his mouth as he 
listened, and tears stung his eyelids. To think of all that 
eloquence having been repressed for years and years and 
years buried like the false steward’s talent, like the pre¬ 
cious’books packed into crates, like the untold treasures 
locked in trunks and drawers! 

The music broke off, recommenced, broke off again at 
the same point, recommenced, impatiently. Aunt Verona, 
he reflected, must be so badly out of practice after all 
the silent years that she found those mordents difficult. 
He could have played them—easily! Ah, but he couldn’t 
have given the piano a soul as she had done. 


SOLO 


61 


At the same spot the music again came to a halt, then 
without warning a frightful jangling chord which seemed 
to have been struck with four or five hands at once was 
wrenched out, as though some gigantic claw had reached 
down and ripped the wires across the whole width of 
the piano. The cruel, thunderous discord made Paul 
jump. With a queer presentiment he stepped back from 
the window, hesitated, then ran around the house to 
the kitchen door. On opening it he caught sight of 
Becky standing agape, her eyes on Aunt Verona, who, 
with feverish energy, was snatching piles of manuscript 
from the drawer of the dresser and tossing them on the 
floor. When the last sheet of foolscap had been added 
to the pile, she thrust in the drawer and began to gather 
the sheets into her arms. Her manner reminded Paul 
of the day when she had destroyed the books, and he 
stepped forward apprehensively. 

“Out of my way, child!” commanded Aunt Verona, 
pushing him aside as she proceeded toward the stove. 

Her face! He was too astounded by it to be terrified. 

He resisted and caught her arms. “No, no, Aunt 
Verona,” he implored, in hysterical tones. “Please, 
please don’t burn the story!” 

His resistance was in vain. She had seized the poker 
and prodded up the stove-lid. 

“Story!” she cried, with a harsh laugh. “Story! It’s 
me— me! My cremation! There! There! There!” 
She fed the flames with one hand and poked at the burn¬ 
ing pages with the other, while Paul succumbed to an 
overwhelming sense of impotence. 

“It isn’t right to do that!” he reproached in a despair¬ 
ing sob. “It’s wrong!” 

She gave no heed. Her eyes were glittering, her grey 
lips pressed together. 

“Oh,” he finally wailed, “I think you’re mean, mean, 
mean!” 


62 


SOLO 


Something infinitely precious, something supremely 
vital had gone. It was as though one of his own limbs 
had been amputated. He recalled now something he had 
heard Aunt Verona mutter a few days back about her 
manuscript, about its being “wicked” and “futile.” Life 
appeared for the first time menacing, sardonic. 

9 

Aunt Verona went upstairs to her cold bedroom, and 
Paul tried to eat some dinner, ignoring Becky’s croaking, 
growling, throat-scratching commentary. Some instinct 
warned him to report the morning’s happenings, and he 
called at Dr. Wilcove’s house on the way to school. 

On his return at four o’clock he found that his instinct 
had been more than justified. Becky’s eyes were rolling 
and she was as incoherently voluble as some hybrid of 
dog and monkey. Mr. Silva was sitting in the kitchen, 
cap in hand, shaking his head solemnly, waiting, as he 
cryptically announced, until he was needed, and there 
was a note in the doctor’s handwriting. 


“Dear Paul, 

“Go at once to Mrs. Kestrell’s and stay there for the 
night. Your aunt is very ill, but there is nothing you can 
do. I’ll come and explain matters to you at Mrs. Kes¬ 
trell’s to-morrow. Show her this note, and say I m 
relying on her kindness.” 

“Where is he?” Paul finally succeeded in saying, 
though his voice was faint and his mind nothing but an 

empty, buzzing box. . , ,, 

Mr. Silva jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards 
the stairs. “You’re not to go up,” he said. „ They ve 
telegraphed to Bridgetown for the ambulance.” 

Paul supposed the “ambulance” was some especially 


SOLO 


63 


skilful sort of doctor. Into the blankness of his mind 
was creeping an old memory, long dormant—the memory 
of his mother tearing herself away in the night, heedless 
of his fears. 

He couldn’t trust himself to ask questions, could 
scarcely formulate any. With the note in his hand and 
his book-bag still slung across his shoulder, he left the 
house and turned up the road towards Gritty Kestrell’s. 
He had never spent a night under any roof but Aunt 
Verona’s, and suddenly a sort of awkward, despairing 
friendliness for the sinister old house clutched at him— 
despairing, for he seemed to be saying farewell to it, 
tearing himself away from it as his mother had done 
nine years ago. Something mysterious was transpiring 
in Aunt Verona’s bedroom, something more ominous 
than mere sickness, for anything that affected Aunt 
Verona was somehow more ominous than phenomena af¬ 
fecting other people. He was sure it was the end of a 
variation. Nothing had flatted this time. A movement 
had just been hopelessly interrupted. And with its cessa¬ 
tion he realized that he had loved it. 

His eyes were drowning in tears and he trudged on, 
oblivious of the ruts and puddles. 


Ill 


I 

By imperceptible degrees Paul had dropped from the 
head of his class to the bottom, and in June failed to pass 
his examinations. He was shocked at his failure, for it 
seemed to place him in the category of dunces, but he 
quickly relapsed into apathy. He had failed well, what 
of it ? Repeat the year ? No fear! He was still himself, 
a person more important than any other, and he could be 
even more completely himself in some town like Halifax 
or Montreal or Boston or New York. 

When the prospect of the vacation was hanging drearily 
on his hands, Dr. Wilcove drove up to Mrs. Kestrell’s 
door one morning and asked to see him. In the walnut 
and horsehair parlour, with its paper roses and musty 
odour, Dr. Wilcove assumed an expression which Paul 
intuitively understood. 

“I know what you’ve come to tell me,” he forestalled. 
“You’re wondering how you can break it to me. It s all 
right.” 

In his own ears the words seemed hard and stilted. But 
he was by no means as unfeeling as Dr. Wilcove momen¬ 
tarily judged, for he had already lived through the im¬ 
pending tragedy and had been preparing himself for this 
day ever since the doctor had first refused to let him 
see Aunt Verona. If it was true that she had been 
unable to move or to speak during all the long dragging 
weeks since she had burned her manuscripts, Paul felt 
64 


SOLO 


65 


it much more merciful that she should cease to live. The 
news which he read on Dr. Wilcove’s countenance made 
it again possible for the boy to think of Aunt Verona with 
a sense of ease. Henceforth, for ever and ever, though 
he should not see her again, she would be with him in 
spirit as the old Aunt Verona, the kind, quiet Aunt 
Verona who sat at his side when he did his lessons; who 
made hot scones for his supper and doughnut men and 
animals; who called out from the kitchen when he got 
the time wrong; the Aunt Verona who said pungent 
things about neighbours with whom she never com¬ 
muned; who broke into odd, serious smiles when he said 
amusing things; who had solemnly taught him the way 
to accept invitations and lift his hat; the Aunt Verona 
who understood his pride and emotional intemperance; 
the Aunt Verona to whom he could explain his alien 
ideas; who confirmed his faith in the validity of his own 
impressions and encouraged him to formulate them hon¬ 
estly; the Aunt Verona who set a daily example of mental 
playfulness; who had made him realize that there was a 
feminine attitude toward phenomena which differed from 
the masculine; the Aunt Verona who inquired what his 
teacher had said to him, what Miss Todd had worn at 
Flora Ashmill’s strawberry social; the Aunt Verona who 
had been very important when she was younger and who 
might have continued to be important but for some un¬ 
kind defeat; who had lived a life romantic and dis¬ 
tinguished beyond the guessing capacities of Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing; the Aunt Verona who never overlooked his faults yet 
who never made fun of him nor took an unfair advan¬ 
tage; who reproved and corrected but never scolded; the 
Aunt Verona who—who collected texts. And the thought 
of those poor useless scraps of paper stuffed pell-mell into 
the cabinet on the dresser, that irrational but methodically 
compiled jumble, that painstakingly memorized but mad 
record of three or four hundred sermons that even the 


66 


SOLO 


preacher had forgotten—this thought twisted his face 
out of shape, and Dr. Wilcove had cause to revise his 
hasty judgment and utter a little speech which Paul 
rather cynically prided himself on recognizing to be 
nicely adjusted to the occasion. He had long since ac¬ 
quired the habit of indulging grown-ups in their favourite 
attitudes, of playing down to their preconceptions of 
juvenility, of making responses that appeared to confirm 
them in their superior sense of fitness. Dr. Wilcove 
would have been put out, could he have known with 
what accuracy his young ward had, in his own mind, 
fore-echoed his words and the gravity of his tone. 

The preparations for the funeral meant very little to 
Paul. He had not even flinched when he had suddenly 
realized why Mr. Kestrell was so busy in his workshop. 
He had a strange conviction that Aunt Verona was now, 
in some inexplicable manner, getting her second oppor¬ 
tunity, that the empty years were being made up to her. 
He was equally sure that she was not languishing in that 
silly Sunday-school-card paradise in which he had once 
believed—as he had believed in Santa Claus. 

And when the mealy-mouthed minister said at the 
funeral service that Verona Winded was now in the pres¬ 
ence of her Maker, Paul squirmed in his seat and longed 
to yell hot denials of the ineptitude. He knew Aunt 
Verona would never have wished to go to what the 
minister spoke of as her Maker, and he knew that Aunt 
Verona was now where she had wished to be. The 
minister was getting it all crookedy. Who was he, to 
take smug charge of such a delicate ceremony! 

As “chief mourner” Paul felt a sense of importance 
which soon left him, for he passionately resented the 
spirit of the proceedings. Why had all these people 
come? Curiosity? The minister spoke of “one whom 
some of you here gathered were privileged to see grow¬ 
ing up as a girl amongst you.” Yes, but if Aunt Verona 


SOLO 


67 


had finally come back to them and for years and years 
steadfastly refused to receive them, what right had they 
to intrude now? They had been privileged to see her 
growing up because she was only a child and couldn’t 
prevent it; but they hadn’t been privileged to see her after 
she had grown up, and Paul begrudged the posthumous 
invasion upon her privacy. He had almost snarled when 
the villagers had walked past the ebony box and peered 
through the little window at Aunt Verona’s wasted 
face. 

Had Dr. Wilcove been gossiping? Did those farmer 
cousins from Upper Bridgetown know something of Aunt 
Verona’s life abroad? Or was the minister guessing 
when he spoke glibly of “brilliant promise” and “volun¬ 
tary retirement to a life of piety and seclusion”? And 
why spoil it all by calling poor Aunt Verona “one of the 
Lord’s handmaidens?” He pictured the twisted smile 
with which Aunt Verona would have received that de¬ 
scription. He heard her saying, “Me, Verona Winded, 
a handmaiden of the Lord God! Well, well—poor God! 
You mustn’t say that word, child—I can but you mustn’t 
—promise!” Then she would have gone to the playroom 
and sat looking out of the window. Aunt Verona might 
conceivably be the handmaiden; but to think of her as 
one of the handmaidens, standing with a group of others, 
wearing the same robes, indistinguishable from them, her 
grey-black hair down her back—it was grotesque. 

Not only did he scorn the minister, but he bore a grudge 
against the ecclesiastical machinery that had inculcated 
such untenable notions. Recalling the days when he had 
seen a tiny replica of hell in the red coals over which 
Aunt Verona had braised onions to cure his colds, he felt 
extravagant compassion for that child who had been so 
needlessly terrified, and extravagant anger against the 
Man of God who so obtusely lied—yes, lied, whether he 
meant to or not. Ass! And the service went on and on. 


68 


SOLO 


Gurgling Gertrude—dear old thing, with tears in her 
eyes—was singing “Abide with Me.” 

Suddenly a flash of understanding came to him. Out 
of the dim past he recalled a phrase of Aunt Verona s 
which now explained much. “You must always try to 
listen to the sermon, child, and believe all they tell you 
in church. It was your mother’s wish.” That was it! 
That was why Aunt Verona had never checked his piety; 
that explained her queer smiles and reticences and sighs 
and head-shakes; that was why she could say “God” and 
he couldn’t—because of some dying injunction of her 
sister’s! The loyalty of Aunt Verona—and the unques¬ 
tioning faith of his poor mother! It was beautiful that 
his mother had believed in all these notions. They ceased 
to be silly when she believed in them; they only became 
so when it was a question of his own mind. Aunt Verona 
had known better. And now he would, gradually, have 
to think back through his whole life and make a new 
allowance for the fact that Aunt Verona had been under 
a handicap regarding the free expression of her views. 
Was that, perhaps, why she had made him memorize 
texts? He was glad of his mother’s injunction, glad that 
Aunt Verona had dutifully fulfilled her compact in so far 
as she was able, glad that he was free to disbelieve for 
himself now that Aunt Verona’s stewardship was at an 
end and he was—well, scarcely grown-up, but very old for 
his age—much older than other boys of twelve, almost 
old enough to commence that vague worldwide adven¬ 
ture which he had often discussed with Aunt Verona. 

The day on which Aunt Verona had burnt her manu¬ 
script had been a milestone in his experience. Her act 
had turned the key in a lock of desire. She had de¬ 
stroyed his only clue to romantic and adventurous living; 
therefore he must plan to see for himself all the marvels 
he and Aunt Verona had talked about, do all the marvels 
she and he knew there were to be done. She could have 


SOLO 


69 


done them—had indeed commenced, then stopped. He 
must go on alone, pretending she was at his back to sug¬ 
gest and encourage, to call out whenever he skipped a note 
or got the time wrong. Dr. Wilcove had said Paul re¬ 
minded him of his aunt, and Paul was shrewd enough to 
notice that the remark had been made when he was in a 
rebellious mood. Through the haze of memory there 
came a ring of revolutionary spears against conventional 
bucklers. It came in the form of daring epigrams mut¬ 
tered by Aunt Verona which, though incomprehensible, 
had lingered for future consideration. Dr. Wilcove’s 
remark gave him not only a clue to himself, but a clue 
to Aunt Verona. They were bold pioneers, he and Aunt 
Verona. The minister said that the meek should inherit 
the earth. The meek! What had the meek minister in¬ 
herited, or the meek Miss Todd? Mr. Silva was meek 
and had inherited more than all the others, though he 
was one of the poorest men in the village—but his inheri¬ 
tance, which was an inheritance of understanding and 
common sense, he had brought with him—from Portugal! 
And he enjoyed his heritage in spite of his meekness, 
rather than by reason of it. Mr. Silva could have been 
an adventurer; indeed when he had been ship’s carpenter 
on the Brandywine he had been an adventurer, serving 
under a very prince of adventurers, who had roamed the 
world over, who had saved Dutch sailors from a burning 
ship in an Atlantic hurricane, and brought Aunt Verona 
one of the finest pianos in all Germany. 

To the minister Paul announced that he would like to 
resign his post as organist. His only excuse was “Under 
the circumstances,” but he advanced it so adroitly that 
the minister had no choice but to look and say: 

“Well, my little man, you’ve done a splendid work for 
the Master, and we shall sorely miss your help. I trust 
that when the next few weeks have brought comfort and 
blessing, you will be ready to resume the post again.” 


?o 


SOLO 


“No fear!” Paul vowed to himself. Never, never, 
never. But all he said was, “Thank you.” 

That night when, after saying good night to Gritty 
and her parents in the kitchen, he took his candle and 
went up the steep back-stairs to the “spare bedroom” that 
had become his makeshift home, his loss came to him in 
a blinding flash, which for an instant illuminated his life 
then left him in darkness. Never again would he experi¬ 
ence the sense of safety and protection he had known 
ever since he could remember. From now on, nothing 
stood between him and the buffetings of life but 
his own puny will and the clumsy if well-meaning kind¬ 
ness of strangers who chanced to take a liking to him. 
For a moment he stood on the stairs while the candle¬ 
light cast wavering shadows which hideously dwarfed 
him. The moment seemed an eternity, for with his 
sudden serenity of thought and feeling the very universe 
stood still. 

The slamming of an outer door caught him out of his 
thrall and he mounted the remaining steps. 

Mrs. Kestrell was kind to him—kind and stupid. 
She had a rather absurd respect for his talents and good 
manners and always gave him a white linen table-napkin, 
whereas Gritty’s was of crash with a pink border. While 
he secretly shared Mrs. Kestrell’s respect for himself, he 
was ashamed of the feeling and disliked to use finer linen 
than Gritty. Not that Gritty minded, for she was a good 
sport. Besides, if Gritty had been piqued she would have 
gone straight to the cupboard and helped herself to the 
best table-napkin in the house. He preferred the role of 
quite ordinary boy. If you were treated as a quite ordi¬ 
nary boy you could surprise people by occasional revela¬ 
tions of superior wisdom, and it was amusing to surprise 
people; whereas if you were treated as a superior being 
you were cramped and intimidated by the consciousness 
that you must do nothing inferior, and in lots of ways 


SOLO 


7 i 


you really were inferior—football, for instance. The 
deference of Mrs. Kestrell, the pats and endearments of 
Miss Todd, and the practical solicitude of Dr. Wilcove 
were in a sense more embarrassing than indifference 
would have been. Their kindness only blurred the edges 
of his problem, and he had never been more in need of 
keeping the edges sharply defined. 

The condolence of Phoebe Meddar was the sweetest of 
all. She saw him at Gritty’s gate, crossed the road and 
stopped before him, then said, shyly but sincerely, “I’m 
sorry about your auntie, Paul; and I missed your play¬ 
ing in church last Sunday.” That was the most delicate 
manifestation of sympathy and the most thrilling recog¬ 
nition of his musical importance that had ever been vouch¬ 
safed to him, but, after all, it was only a negative 
offering to a boy whose whole attention must be concen¬ 
trated on putting together the puzzle-pieces of his 
disrupted life. And Phoebe’s little offering summed up 
the whole of Hale’s Turning. Hale’s Turning took the 
trouble to be sorry because he cut a picturesque figure. 
He could not do much with its sorrow, still less with its 
white linen table-napkins and its plans to enfold him 
within the bigoted traditions of its life. He was obsessed 
with a desire to escape, to go where he could see only 
strange faces, hear only strange voices, move among peo¬ 
ple who had never even heard of Hale’s Turning and its 
sleepy ways, people whose ideas were fresh and exciting 
and drawn from rich sources. He wanted to leave his 
old self—the self that had somehow been laid to rest in 
the graveyard—and set out in search of a new self, to 
wander, if necessary, to the very edge of the world in 
search of it. 

2 

If anything had been needed to tip the scale more 
sharply on the side of rebellion, the effect was accom- 


72 


SOLO 


plished by a series of revivalist meetings, which, sweeping 
over the country-side like a plague, had the magnetic 
effect of a circus. Paul disdained any public celebration 
which he had not helped to organize. School concerts, 
tableaux, “socials,” and First of July parades were dif¬ 
ferent, for in them he had always played “no mean part.” 
But Gritty Kestrell, who adored crowds, half dragged 
him along to the big tent on the hill above the church 
where a renowned evangelist was to hold forth. 

Some of the hymns were new and stirring, but Paul 
could not subscribe to the machine-like manner in which 
the evangelist’s partner played them on the portable organ. 
The tent was crowded to suffocation. Baptists predomi¬ 
nated, but Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and 
nondescripts kept squeezing in between the chairs and the 
sides of the tent. In front were benches kept vacant for 
penitents. 

Paul had come to scoff, and there was material at hand 
at the very outset. How, for instance, could anything be 
made “whiter than snow” by being “washed in the blood 
of the lamb” ? At best it was an ugly picture. 

Moment by moment the atmosphere became tenser. 
Impossible to keep one’s eyes off that electric man, whose 
mouth writhed, whose arms never rested, whose eyes 
flashed and pierced, whose voice made your spine shiver. 
Paul could hear his neighbours breathing. Women and 
old men were whispering, “Praise be to His Holy Name.” 
At regular intervals the speaker leaned forward like an 
impassioned auctioneer, making his congregation feel 
that when the gavel descended the bargain would be for 
ever lost to them, salvation beyond their reach, damnation 
and agony their portion. 

Suddenly Paul caught sight of Becky States. Growl¬ 
ing and chattering more weirdly than ever, rolling her 
eyes till they glistened like porcelain in her black face, 
she wrenched the prisms from her ears and flung herself 


SOLO 


73 


on her knees, crawling up the aisle over the grass floor 
and sobbing hoarsely. And the evangelist leaned still 
farther forward and said soothingly to her—to black 
Becky—“Ay, sister, ay, sister!” 

Holy smoke! Yet Paul couldn’t laugh—he felt too 
tight. 

Suddenly his attention leapt as though it had been 
lashed with a whip. For the man was pointing straight 
at him. “You there, you and you and you! How much 
longer do you reckon you can go on concealing your 
shame—eh? What would your feelings be if you found 
out that somebody had been watching you all those times 
you thought nobody was looking? Ay, my poor friends, 
you’d blush and stammer if you thought your neighbours 
could see all the meanness in your heart. But in the 
darkest hours, behind the locked door, in the most un¬ 
likely places, where nobody is looking, God can see. He 
has seen—think back, he saw you; he’s got it down 
in a book; what excuse will you make on the Day of 
Judgment when he confronts you with the record? What 
will your blushing and stammering avail you then? You 
may go on hoodwinking yourself and your neighbours, 
but you can’t hoodwink the Almighty. You can’t flee 
the wrath to come—not by a long sight! The flames of 
hell are never damped. They’re hungry for fuel. What 
kind of a fix will you and you and you and you be in if 
God reaches down His hand this very night and smites 
you?” 

Paul was not trying to guess the answer; he was 
merely swallowed up in the terror of his own shortcom¬ 
ings. He was mesmerised by this horrid man who fing¬ 
ered the secrets of one’s soul. His throat was dry and his 
heart bumped. People were moaning and pushing their 
way towards the front; he felt that in a moment he would 
be drawn there himself; desperately he was trying to re¬ 
member some reason why he shouldn’t follow, why he 


74 


SOLO 


shouldn’t answer this final invitation to be saved. One 
might die in the night. . 

He felt a hot little hand grip his fingers, and looked 
around to find Gritty in a panic. Her blue eyes were 
fairly growing, her lips were apart, her face had lost its 
pertness and was pale and appealing. A sudden revul¬ 
sion of feeling swept over him. Gritty too! That swine 
up there had been making Gritty think she was a sinner 

_Gritty, the best little sport in Hale’s Turning, a girl 

who would tackle anybody with her fists, even John 
Ashmill, in the interests of truth; Gritty who got into 
scrapes but who always owned up, Gritty who had run 
out into the hall and bitten the Principal’s hand when he 
tried to strap Wilfrid Fraser for shooting spit-balls! 
That duffer might point out his sins, the sins of Paul 
Minas, but he needn’t go insulting Gritty Kestrell! If 
God was going to send Gritty to eternal punishment, 
well, he could send Paul Minas along with her—they 
would go to hell together, just as they had planned to go 
on the stage together. Paul thought of the Sweet Caporal 
they had smoked, and hesitated. There was that of 
course. Gritty wasn’t faultless—far from it. She 
wasn’t above stealing things from the pantry, or pelting 
people’s windows on Hallow-e’en. But it was all in fun. 
And if God wanted faultless people he could whistle for 
them. 

“Hey, Gritty,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of this. 
She was still in a tremble and quite prepared to go 
through with whatever the man should prescribe. This 
was unlike Gritty, who usually said something saucy when 
you commanded her. He got up, dragging at her arm, 
.and she followed. The evangelist saw them turn towards 
the exit, instead of towards the mercy seat, and called 
out to them. Paul’s knees threatened to give way, and 
Gritty gasped. A surge of nervous indignation swept 
over Paul and he went grimly on. 


SOLO 


75 


“Come on/’ he said and gave her a brutal yank. 

“You two there—you boy and girl-” 

Paul could bear it no longer. Pushing Gritty through 
the opening in the tent he stepped outside, then thrust 
back his head and cried at the top of his lungs: 

“Mind your own business and go to hell!” 

It was the first time he had ever said a real “swear 
word.” 

He saw a blur of outraged heads swing round, and 
was for an instant aware of two startled eyes in a famil¬ 
iar face, terror-stricken eyes that ought somehow to have 
been cajoling. Walter Dreer! He grasped Gritty more 
tightly by the hand and ran with her for dear life down 
the hill, past the church, bringing up at Gritty’s gate. 
The twilight had turned to night—indigo night—and on 
the hill the entrance to the tent showed in an orange tri¬ 
angle, surrounded by faintly luminous canvas. A minia¬ 
ture hell set up as a puny challenge to a vast, dark, 
beneficent world. 

A scent of syringas clung to the little brown house. 
The windmill creaked faintly and the trees rustled. Gritty 
was panting from the swift run. The sparkle had come 
back to her eyes, which caught a gleam from the lamp¬ 
light pouring softly through the window. It was Paul 
who collapsed on the doorstep, scared by the enormity of 
his deed. But he was just daring to be glad, glad! That 
swine had tried to prevent him from leaving the meeting! 
He had retaliated by doing something he had wanted to 
do ever since he could remember. Often, before the 
mirror, he had practised “faces” he would like to make 
at people—the minister, for one. At last he had done 
even better: had sworn out loud in a meeting-place, and 
everybody had heard. He had got even with the com¬ 
munity for an injury he couldn’t quite formulate. The 
long smouldering had given way to a flare-up. Now 
they would know he was on fire. 



76 


SOLO 


“Oh Paul,” Gritty broke the silence, speaking with a 
hushed, ecstatic admiration, “I wouldn’t a dreamt you d 
ever a dasst do a thing like that! Not even John Ash- 
mill would a dasst! What’d Miss Winded a said. 

He pictured himself bursting into the old kitchen with 
the story on his lips—no text this time. A tardy realiza¬ 
tion of Aunt Verona’s sense of fitness brought back his 
composure as if by magic, for instead of the dreaded 
blank expression he saw Aunt Verona’s lips work 
strangely and her hands give a little nervous jerk—while 
her eyes half narrowed and she walked to the stove to 
test an iron with a moistened finger. 

“I think Aunt Verona would have laughed,” he said; 
then added, with a touch of repressed glee, “I’m sure 
she’d have laughed—to herself !” 

A few days later he was walking along the bluff and 
was arrested by the sight of a group of people in black 
clothes standing up to their waists in the river. The 
penitents were being baptized. Paul knew.the rite. “They 
call it the Jordan!” he remarked to himself, and sat 
down on the cliff to watch. “Like sheep dipping,” he 
commented cynically, then caught himself up, for into 
his mind had come the echo of something Mark Laval 
had once said about narrow-mindedness. “But it won’t 
make Becky whiter than snow,” he mused. 

After supper that night there was a ring at the door¬ 
bell. 

“It’s the minister to see Paul,” Mrs. Kestrell an¬ 
nounced, in her most subservient manner. 

For a moment Paul was intimidated. He would fight 
the minister if need be, but would rather elude him. He 
remembered the days when he had answered the bell for 
Aunt Verona. 

“Say I’m not at home,” he instructed, with a not too 
successful attempt at lordliness. 

“Oh, but-” Mrs. Kestrell began. 


SOLO 


77 


Her unmanageable daughter elbowed her to one side. 
‘Til tell him,” Gritty announced. 

Mrs. Kestrell looked frightened, but Gritty’s hand was 
already on the door-knob. 

“You know where girls go for telling fibs,” Paul cau¬ 
tioned her in the bantering tones he and Gritty had begun 
to assume with regard to religious discussions. 

“Oh, pooh!” she flung back. “I ain’t afraid of no hell 
nor no ministers.” 

“Why, Margaret!” exclaimed Mrs. Kestrell in deep 
distress. She had never used the nickname by which her 
daughter was universally known. 

“Leave me be, ma. I’m going, I tell you.” 

Paul stole out through the back door, and from behind 
the well watched the minister leave the house. When 
Gritty joined him, they went to the gate and, with 
thumbs to their noses, waggled eighteen grubby fingers 
at the retreating broadcloth. 

3 

When Paul had gained his point with regard to the 
Baptist school at Wolfville, he had no valid excuse for 
rejecting the alternative, a non-sectarian boy’s school in 
Halifax. The fact that the suggestion emanated from 
Dr. Wilcove implied that the school was depressingly 
safe, but he could scarcely object on such negative evi¬ 
dence. After all, the school was in Halifax, a city in¬ 
finitely bigger than Bridgetown, with a population of 
40,000—so many people that you might never “get to 
know” them all by sight. It was thrilling too, to be 
going so far alone on the train, with a trunk, two bags, 
and five dollars. It was kind of Dr. Wilcove to give him 
so much money. It never occurred to him that the money 
might be his own, and not the doctor’s. He had heard 
vague talk of trustees, but had thought of them as of- 


SOLO 


78 

fleers who met in the vestry of the church after Wednes- 
day night prayer-meetings. 

During the summer Dr. Wilcove had given him the 
key of the playroom in order that he might practise on 
the big piano, but he had made no use of the privilege, 
because when he had gone back one afternoon he had 
been so strangely subdued by the stillness of the house 
that he had replaced the lid on the piano with a shudder, 
tiptoed out of the room, locked the door, and walked 
away without having struck a note. In Halifax he was 
to receive lessons from a lady to whose name was affixed 
a string of letters. He would ask her to teach him the 
Liszt sonata. 

It was two weeks before Paul was shown into the pres¬ 
ence of this personage. He was impressed by her specta¬ 
cles and her “English accent.” She told him she had a 
diploma from an academy in London, and he marvelled. 
Then she placed Schumann’s “Merry Peasant” on the 
piano before him and said: “Can you play that?” He 
shut the book impatiently and handed it back to her. 

“I played that at a concert in Hale’s Turning Town 
Hall when I was six,” he said. “I’m twelve now.” 

“Then will you play me one of your latest pieces,” she 
invited, not as impressed as she might have been, Paul 
thought. 

Something unyielding behind her spectacles made him 
bristle. He was sure of his ground in the realm of 
music, for he had been subjected to a rigorous discipline. 
Aunt Verona had seldom complimented him, but when 
she had done so she had given minute reasons for her 
approval. There was one piece, not as difficult as some, 
but tricky in an unusual way. After he had toiled over 
it for weeks with Aunt Verona, she had said, “Endlich, 
mein Kind, hast du es richtig be griff en. ,} 

Then she had gone on to tell him, in a rare burst of 
confidence, that the composer of the piece, whose name 


SOLO 


79 


was Leschetizky, had himself shown her how it ought to 
be done, and that Paul had reproduced it in a manner 
which would have made the composer pat him on the 
back. He decided to test his new teacher. Without an¬ 
nouncing the name of the piece he began to play it. Ex¬ 
cept for occasional hours at Mrs. Kestrell’s feeble instru¬ 
ment he had neglected his exercises, and he was not in his 
best form. For all that he gave, as he secretly felt, a 
creditable performance, without faltering once on the 
runs. When he had finished he waited. The teacher 
was visibly taken aback. Paul was sure she had no idea 
what he had been playing. 

“Very good indeed,” she finally said. “You have a 
mature grasp. Unfortunately your method is quite 
wrong. We shall have to put you on exercise for a long 
while yet. You’ll have to begin at the beginning.” 

She motioned him from his seat and gave a demon¬ 
stration of what he must learn to do with his hands. 

“Do you see?” she kept asking, as she explained each 
new step in a bookish rigmarole. 

He nodded his head repeatedly by way of answer, but 
his whole being was stiff with disgust. 

“Come to-morrow at three for the first lesson,” she 
said, ushering him from the studio. 

He went straight to the head master’s study. “I’ve 
decided not to take music lessons,” he announced 
timidly. 

The master looked him over. “It’s not exactly for you 
to decide my lad,” he said. “You’re here to study what 
your guardian has arranged for you to study.” 

“But she doesn’t know” cried Paul. He groped for 
words. “I can almost play the Liszt sonata,” he hurried 
on, “and she says I’ll have to begin at the beginning— 
her funny old beginning. I’ve been organist in a church 
and everything, and she asked me if I could play The 
Merry Peasant!’ I won’t be her pupil,” he continued, with 


8o 


SOLO 


the boldness of desperation. “She hits the keys like an 
old stick!” 

The master had got up from his seat. “Ill speak to 
Miss Mason,” he said, “and find out what she has to say 
about it. Meanwhile you must learn once and for all 
that schools are not run in accordance with the whims of 
scholars who think they know more than their teachers. 
And it isn’t exactly respectful to apply such a term as 
‘old stick’ to one’s music-mistress. You’ll report as usual 
for your music lesson until your grade has been finally 
settled. Now go and report yourself to the physical 
instructor.” 

Indeed, he would do no such thing. Gym was all 
right in a way. The swimming tank was a delight, and 
basket-ball was good fun when not taken too seriously. 
Drill however, with its concerted lunging and bending 
and marching to the tune of “Won’t you come home, Bill 
Bailey” on a jangling piano, was grotesque, and they 
might as well know—“once and for all ’ as the head 
master said—that he just couldn t be bothered with it. 

The tragedy of the music-room had blurred his sense 
of duty. There was a good measure of liberty in the 
school but for a boy whose comings and goings had al¬ 
ways been adjustable to his mood the schedules were an 
insufferable nuisance. As he walked through the campus 
his eyes lifted toward the distant hill crowned by the 
citadel. From that eminence there must be a splendid 
view of the city and the harbour.' With a sense of guilt 
and a still stronger sense of elation he slipped through 
the gate and ran down the road. 

“But your method is quite wrong! That sentence 
kept ringing in his ears. A fat lot she knew about 
methods! “The Merry Peasant!” Why, even Gritty 
Kestrell could play that! She could have her old diploma! 
“You’re here to study what your guardian has arranged 
for you to study!” And what did old boy Wilcove know 


SOLO 


81 


about it? Who was he, to arrange one’s life! Hadn’t 
one agreed to come here simply to escape the Wilcoves 
and the wiseacres! “Report yourself to the physical in¬ 
structor !” Let the physical instructor report himself and 
see how he liked it! 

He had started to run up the long grassy slope towards 
the citadel. 

4 

The French class was droning out, in unison, the parts 
of the verb “to have.” Paul sat sullen beside a young 
savage with whom he had been paired, presumably, in ac¬ 
cordance with a theory that Paul’s good manners would 
have a civilizing effect. The theory may have been excel¬ 
lent, but it scarcely compensated Paul for the pin-pricks 
and pinches, the surreptitious kicks and hair-pulling 
whereby the savage was working his way up in the scale 
of civilization. 

A stormy scene in the head master’s study, following 
Paul’s failure to appear for music lessons, had been fol¬ 
lowed by a still stormier seance in which he had been held 
to account in the matter of absences from Gym. This 
morning there had been a humiliating exposition in the 
arithmetic class, all because Paul, standing at the black¬ 
board, hadn’t been able to see through a new system of 
“doing” decimals, and had, after a long, fatiguing, chalky 
evolution come to the conclusion that the farmer had 
paid $185,363 for a dozen sheep. His classmates had 
slapped their legs in ecstasy, and the teacher, with an air 
of relenting—which only made matters worse, for it was 
a new way of belittling him; as if the silly answer mat¬ 
tered one way or another!—had said, “Don’t you think 
you could reduce that sum so that it would be more in 
keeping with a poor farmer’s purse? Experiment with 
the decimal. See if you can’t put it in a more reasonable 
place.” 


82 


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Exasperated by taunts, exhausted by the arduous fig¬ 
uring, Paul had gone hot, then cold—cold with vindic¬ 
tiveness. He had had enough of standing at the 
blackboard and furnishing amusement for those who were 
safe in their seats. With ominous deliberation he picked 
up the chalk and put a solid white point after every digit 
in the long answer. Let them take their choice! He re¬ 
placed the chalk and walked to his seat. The class was 
too dumbfounded to laugh. 

As Paul sat down, the teacher sharply called his name: 

“Minas, stand up.” Paul stood up. “Did I ask you to 
leave the blackboard?” 

Paul felt thirty pairs of eyes on him. “You asked me to 
experiment with the decimal, he replied in a steely voice. 

“But not to make a fool of yourself.” 

winced. “And I didn t ask to be sent to the 
board to be made a fool of, either.” , „ 

“You will report to the head master at three o’clock.” 

That interview was still pending, and Paul, sick at 
heart, weighed during the endless French lesson the pros 
and cons of reporting to the head master. The world 
was becoming hideously impersonal; his raw smarts were 
being reduced to a neuralgic ache. Nothing now seemed 
to matter. All he knew was that he would never knuckle 
under—never, never, never! 

“J’ai, tu as, il a,” chanted the class, ‘‘nous a/vons, vous 

avez, ils ont 

The savage beside him was chanting it with the rest, 
but Paul was dumb. The teacher s eyes had been watch¬ 
ing him. 

“Some members of the class,” he said, “are not repeat¬ 
ing the words after me. Now once again.” 

Still Paul declined to move his lips, and the savage, 
from the tail of his eye, gave him a wondering glance. 

At the end of this repetition there was a portentous 
silence. 


SOLO 


83 


“Stand up, Minas.” 

As Paul stood up with the usual weary shuffle, the 
savage dropped a book, as though it had fallen from 
Paul’s knees. 

“You’ve ignored my warnings. Now explain why 
you’ve refused to repeat the drill.” 

Despair and nausea were pulling at the vitals of the 
rebel. Once more the smouldering embers broke into 
flame. He felt himself on some pedestal surveying a mob 
which was taunting him with his inability to get down. 
Couldn’t get down, eh! He’d show them that he was 
“King of the Castle” and they were the “dirty rascals!” 
His eyes narrowed, he leaned forward, and whipped out 
the words with a vicious little flourish: 

“Parce que cest pire qu idiot—ces chansons que vous 
nous faites chanter. Pen ai plein le dos!” 

For a moment he thrilled at the showing off, then his 
spirits sank to despondent depths. How he longed for 
the safe kitchen, the freedom and wisdom and compre¬ 
hension of the empty house where he and Aunt Verona 
had enjoyed a communion more precious than he had 
realized at the time, more wonderful than anybody would 
ever be able to understand. He felt the friendly warmth 
of that historic little stove, smelt the friendly odour of 
fresh-baked scones, the evening odour of kerosene, heard 
the clatter of logs which Mr. Silva dropped from his 
arms to the floor of the porch, the sound of a pro¬ 
tective voice which called out “Paul, Paul, go back two 
bars!” 

He was too sick to enjoy the dramatic effect his out¬ 
pour had created, too apathetic to fear the inevitable pun¬ 
ishment. He was dimly conscious that, for once, there 
was a spirit of deference in the regard of his fellows; 
but he was also aware that the teacher was getting ready 
to say something “teacherish.” He waited with cynical 
patience. 


84 


SOLO 


“You don’t seem to realize, Minas, that there is such a 
thing as esprit de corps. Even though you know some¬ 
thing about French, it doesn’t absolve you from doing 
as the rest of the class does, so long as you’re a member 
of it” 

Paul remained silent, relentless. 

“You see that, don’t you?” 

Paul would have one more shot, were it suicidal. I 
don’t see what esprit de corps has to do with my wasting 
my time. I’d rather be in the library reading French 
books than saying J’ai, tu as, il a.” 

The vindictive mimicry of the last phrase brought a 
suppressed chuckle from the class. The savage whispered, 
“Sail into him, Polly!” With the bully’s instinct he had 
hit on the nickname which John Ashmill had made tra¬ 
ditional in Hale’s Turning. 

“I think, Minas,” said the teacher, “you had better 
leave the room, and report your grievance to the head 
master at three.” 

Paul gathered up his books and departed. As he was 
closing the door he heard the teacher say, “Now, class, 
once more, ‘ J’ai - 

The “cons” had it at last. He would not report to the 
head master. He flung his books into a locker and walked 
out of the building. Nearly two dollars remained of his 
fund. Setting out for the heart of the town he mentally 
composed a telegram to Dr. Wilcove. “Will not stay 
here a minute longer. Can you come or shall I return?” 
That was the form he finally approved. 

Yet when it came to the scratch he hesitated. The 
telegraph offlce was in sight now, and his knees were 
trembling, his steps lagging. He pictured Dr. Wilcove’s 
dismay, his sigh of vexation, his protestations. There 
would be more interviews, more arguments—an expostu¬ 
lating group of grown-ups seized in the grip of a pitiable 
necessity to defend their wisdom from the affronts of 


SOLO 


85 


juvenility. They would have all the words they needed 
logic, that grown-up monopoly!—whereas, he, well, some¬ 
how there were no words to describe his misery. There 
was an implacable ego within him which protested, which 
saw the injustice of their attitude, which refused to be 
gulled by their phrases, which could cry out, but which 
couldn’t coherently state itself. It could put a sling into 
his hands wherewith he might slay a legion of Philistines, 
but it couldn’t devise an articulate battle-cry. So far his 
rebelliousness had only beat against the wall without 
forcing a breach. 

He walked past the telegraph office, past the smutty- 
looking post office, past the markets, on and on blindly 
toward the harbour. He liked the acrid, tarry smells of 
the warehouses and ship chandlers’ stores. He envied the 
stevedores who were lounging about, chewing tobacco 
and drinking out of tin cans, envied them for having out¬ 
lived the nightmare of school. They could whistle as they 
trundled heavy bales over the cobble-stones. 

Paul noticed a big, bronzed, bearded man who looked 
ill at ease in a tweed suit, new boots and a hat too small 
for him. This man acknowledged the greeting of a 
lounging stevedore and his words struck a sudden spark 
against the flint of the boy’s heart. 

“Ay, I expected to clear to-day, he said, and I may 
yet if I can complete my crew. I’ve put my steward in 
the’forecastle. He’d been at me the last two trips to go 
before the mast. But that leaves one watch still a man 
short, and no steward. Too long a voyage to start out 

short-handed.” . 

The lounging stevedore turned over his wad ot to- 
bacco and spat. “Astraly’s a long ways off ” he com¬ 
mented. “Nobody’s anxious to go so far from home, 
not in a wind-jammer. They’re all for steam these days. 
You’ll soon be a back number, captain.” 

Paul heard no more. His faculties were merged in a 


86 


SOLO 


single wild hope. He hurried forward, plunged into the 
group, and turned to the bearded man. 

“Oh, captain, won’t you take me as cabin-boy?” he 

begged. . , 

The captain surveyed him with a surprised, twinkling 
eye, and Paul’s wits began to work at high tension. 
Instinct told him he must lie as he had never before lied, 
boldly and directly, must rapidly invent a story that would 
hold water, at the same time allowing this particular 
specimen of grown-up-ness to indulge to the full what¬ 
ever cut and dried theories it might have as to the judg¬ 
ing and handling of youth. But, above all, he must gain 
his end, for if he didn’t something would die within him. 

The men standing near seemed to take it as a joke. 
Then there were arguments and cross-examinations, ques¬ 
tions advanced in the hope of tripping him up. He met 
them all, and found new arguments to support every 
answer. Away at the base of sub-consciousness was an 
image of Gritty Kestrell. He was employing tactics that 
Gritty had, by her example, taught him—Gritty who 
braved everybody and always got what she wanted. 

His name? Minas was too well known among sailors. 
Once more Aunt Verona must be his stand-by. But 
Winded was also well known. Then he had an inspira¬ 
tion. “Laval,” he lied. “Paul Laval.” 

“ Parlez-vous ding-dong ? 

“ Parfaitement t monsieur” 

More questions, more and more, but Paul held his 
ground. A harbour official advanced, accompanied by a 
lurching figure. 

“Just looking for you, Captain Caxton,” he said. “I’ve 
found you a man. He’s not an A. B., but he’s been be¬ 
fore the mast.” He jerked his thumb towards the appli¬ 
cant. “It’ll take a day or two to sober him up, but he’s 
a husky brute. Been working at the fisheries.” 

The captain turned to question the seaman, who replied 


SOLO 


87 


in a beery voice and fished out a greasy discharge certifi¬ 
cate. Paul’s nerves were tense, and every moment of 
delay added to his anxiety. 

“About the tug,” broke in the harbour official, “Mc¬ 
Donald is ordered out to look for the Swanhilda. If 
you’re ready in an hour he’ll tow you out, and kill two 
birds with the one stone.” 

The captain breathed deeply at the prospect, consulted 
his watch, then turned to Paul with a more business-like 
interest. 

“Are you willing to swear to all you’ve told me?” he 
asked. 

“Yes, sir.” 

The captain pursed his lips and ruminated. “Well,” 
he said at length, “you know what you’re in for. If 
you’re ready to rough it, you can come up to the office 
and sign on.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Paul knew that this particular 
grown-up expected some such acknowledgment, and his 
nerves relaxed as the captain turned to the others with a 
twinkle and said: 

“I reckon we’ve all of us run away once in our lives, 
eh?” The others nodded. “Might do worse than take 
this hobo,” he continued, indicating the swaying seaman. 
“Hate to wait any longer. Been held up a week a’ready 
getting a crew. My cook only come aboard to-day. A 
Russian Finn. All right, boy, this way.” 

Paul was digging his nails into his palms. The thought 
of signing the articles under the eyes of government 
officials intimidated him. Even yet something might go 
wrong. 

The process of signing on was a simple matter. The 
esteem in which the captain seemed to be held made it 
even a pleasant social function. Still more pleasant was 
Paul’s discovery that he was going to be paid for being 
rescued! The thought of a salary hadn’t entered his 


88 


SOLO 


head until the captain said, “The wages is three pound 
ten.” 

Paul knew what pounds were. Miss Todd had one 
made into a brooch and called it her “Jubilee sovereign.” 
And he was to receive three of them every month and ten 
shillings as well! Shillings were quarters. He would 
send jubilees to Phoebe and Gritty. 

His mind went soaring, until he was on board the tow¬ 
boat, seated beside his beery shipmate. 

“No dunnage?” inquired the captain. 

Paul recalled an incident in Thaddeus of Warsaw. 
“Pawned everything I had,” he explained. Instantly he 
saw the pitfall. 

“Got the tickets?” 

Surely he wasn’t going to blunder at the last minute. 
Ah, he had it! “Gave ’em to a waitress for my last 
meal,” he said. 

The captain looked sceptical, but the engine bell had 
rung and the hawser came plump down in the stern. The 
wharf retreated and with the churn of the water all the 
discords of the past weeks suddenly ceased, giving place 
to a thrilling serenity. A hoarse scream from the 
whistle proclaimed the beginning of a new theme, a theme 
which he could play as he chose; and he knew, despite a 
hundred Miss Masons, that his method would prove to be 
the right one. 

Far above the blackened buildings rose a brown, grassy 
hill, crowned by the citadel from whose ramparts he had, 
only a few days since, looked down with a vague yearning 
at this very harbour, at the high masts and broad yards 
of the very ship towards which he was now being pro¬ 
pelled. Quel miracle! 

In his pocket there was a pencil and a school notebook. 
He could get an envelope from the captain of the tug, 
give him two cents for a stamp, and ask him to post the 
letter on his return to port. 


SOLO 


89 


“Dear Gritty,*' he scribbled. 

“I’m running away to sea. School was driving me 
crazy. You know how I mean. Gritty be a sport and 
tell Dr. Wilcove for me. I haven’t got the nerve to. 
He’s kind and I’m grateful for what he did, but I don’t 
know how to explain to him. The music teacher was the 
worst, she was something fierce, and the French teacher 
too. They picked on me like the Principal used to pick 
on Wilfrid Fraser and if you’d of been here you would 
have bitten them. But it was my fault because I didn’t 
obey the rules. So I picked back on them. I can’t tell 
you where I’m going, but I’ll write when I arrive. You 
won’t get the letter for months and months, because I’m 
going as far as you can see on the geography. I’m only 
running away because I want to see everything, and hate 
school. Break it as nicely as you can to Dr. Wilcove. 
Thank your mother again for me. And good-bye, old 
Gritty. Don’t ever forget me. I won’t you. And don’t 
you dare say coffin out loud. 

“Paul Windell Minas.” 






* 



PART II 


91 



















IV 

I 

Seated on an anchor caked with drying mud—an 
anchor that had been heaved on deck and made fast after 
much grunting, yo-hoing and pushing of breasts against 
capstan bars—Paul gazed far ahead, beyond the fat, 
steel bowsprit, beyond the foamy grey waves that ad¬ 
vanced at a slant, towards a narrow, horizontal strip of 
blue above which stretched a wall of mist surmounted by 
clusters of cloud that looked like wash-drawings of gigan¬ 
tic balls of lint swept up on a carpet. Straight for that 
turquoise rift, straining and creaking, careening with 
great stately lunges, raising a starboard shoulder to avoid 
the hissing crests of the waves, then swerving broadly 
to port as she dipped into the ensuing hollows, the 
Clytemnestra drove on and on, patiently, grimly, loyally, 
too engrossed in her efforts to be eager, yet too intent on 
her goal to dally. 

Once she even rebuked the helmsman. When he put 
the wheel over too hard, so that she was forced a point 
closer to the wind—a point that threatened to stifle her 
breath—she sent back a hasty warning by flapping her 
jib and fore upper top-gallant sail, then quivered with re¬ 
lief when the wheel went spinning back and disaster was 
averted. Paul turned, narrowed his eyes, gazed in right¬ 
eous disapproval down the length of the ship, then 
grunted understanding^, for it was the new man, the 
beery hobo, who was not as familiar with the art of 
93 


94 


SOLO 


steering as he might have been. From the depths of his 
nautical experience—extending over several long days 
now—Paul scolded. The simpleton might have got the 
ship aback, then there would have been the devil to pay. 
Didn’t he know that that was how top-masts were 
snapped off—sometimes, when a gale was blowing? This 
ten-knot breeze, Paul had to remind himself, was, of 
course, only a zephyr. Wait till they ran into a real 
gale—then that land-lubber would see! 

Paul had learned much about gales, hurricanes and 
typhoons. He felt there wouldn’t, somehow, be any on 
this voyage; the worst storms seemed to have blown 
themselves out years ago; nothing could ever again be as 
terrific as the hurricanes that the second mate and the 
sailmaker and the cook and the carpenter—“Chips”— 
and half the men in the forecastle had weathered in their 
time. Paul felt it was a pity he had struck such a tame 
sort of ship. Nothing, apparently, could be expected to 
happen to her. She was so much smaller—for all her 
two thousand and forty-nine registered tonnage—than 
those other fine vessels he had been told about; so much 
slower, so much less convenient to handle, carried so 
much less canvas, was so inadequately victualled, so pro¬ 
saically devoid of hoodoos—and one had, in one’s pitiable 
ignorance, thought her such a brave-looking craft, had 
thought the sails so vast and neat and stout, the ropes 
so thick and strong, the paint so fresh, the decks so vel¬ 
vety smooth, the food so—well, not really bad. 

Even the mate and the “old man,” hardy Canadians 
of the “blue-nose” stamp, Paul had looked upon as com¬ 
petent and sailorly to a degree—yet now he knew that, 
though the “old man understood what he was about,” 
still he wasn’t a patch on other old men under whom 
this weirdly variegated score of men had sailed in good 
old days which Paul, having been born so lamentably 
late in history, could enjoy only through the medium of 


SOLO 


95 


narrative. Glorious as all these yarns were, instinct as 
they were with the inspiriting breath of adventure, Paul 
could almost have wished he had been left in ignorance 
of those incomparable clippers and packet ships, for there 
was something magnificently regal about the Clytemnes- 
tra; it would have been easy to offer her unstinted fealty; 
she was so obviously doing her best. And this after¬ 
noon he had crept forward by himself, as soon as his 
manifold duties had permitted, in order that no inveterate 
narrator might dull the fine edge of his enjoyment. 

The cook was his chief entertainer, for they were 
thrown a good deal in each other’s society. Six times a 
day Paul had to wait in the hot, narrow galley while the 
greasy Finn filled up the basket with tureens and platters, 
tea-pots, coffee-pots, vegetable and pudding dishes: one 
trip for the table of the captain and first mate, and an¬ 
other for that of the second mate, carpenter and sail- 
maker. Then at odd moments throughout the day he 
visited the galley for hot water, or to carry supplies from 
the store-room, or to heat irons to press the old man’s 
shirts and pyjamas and handkerchiefs. And the cook 
had an anecdote to impart on each occasion. 

He had recently got his discharge from a Yankee 
barque, the Ezra R. Smith, on which there had been un¬ 
limited weekly rations of sugar and baking powder, 
yeast, spices, butter, and eggs preserved in water-glass. 
Wherefore, for the bread served on the Ezra R. Smith 
there had been no need to apologize; the plum duffs on the 
Ezra R. Smith, thanks to the plethora of ingredients, had 
come into spontaneous and succulent being—they had, pre¬ 
sumably, little kinship with the present rubberoid abor¬ 
tions. The prunes on the Ezra R. Smith had not been 
wrinkled of mien nor coal-like in consistency; the dried 
apples had been less reminiscent of scraps from a cob¬ 
bler’s floor; the pots and pans, the hatchets and meat- 
grinders had been more numerous and sharp, the ovens 


9 6 


SOLO 


hotter. Paul wondered how the Clytemnestra—tven 
though she had been built on the Clyde and sailed under 
the protection of that celebrated Britannia whom as a 
child, he had pictured, on the seashore with a school foot- 
rule in her hand, “ruling” the waves!—he wondered how 
she had the courage to drive on, under such handicaps, 
until the second mate, who swore by the Macrihanish, 
enlightened him by saying, apropos of the Ezra R. Smith, 
“What, that sieve! That floating casket! Why I went 
aboard o’ her in Rosario once. She liked to never got 
there, at that. The only sailin’ she done was backwards 
till the skipper run short o’ booze, eighty-odd days out, 
and come on deck for the first time and filled her sails 
with cusses. God help any mother’s son that ships on 
that fire bucket. She’s one o’ your hunch-back wooden 
old-timers—except that it ain’t lucky to touch her hump. 
She’ll part amidships one o’ these days. Good enough 
in her time, twenty-five year ago. I mind once, when I 
was boatswain aboard the Macrihanish—” but Paul had 
seen the captain’s form emerging from the chart-room 
and scurried off to polish the knives. 

To-day, a Sunday and nearly a week out, it was pleas¬ 
ant to sit on the anchor and, for the first time since los¬ 
ing sight of land, really take stock of the situation. Up 
to this moment he had been too busy to meditate. The 
first hours on board, when the citadel, then the broad gate 
of the outer harbour, and finally the whole coast-line 
dropped away, had been more wonderful than anything 
in his experience. Never should he forget his strange 
exaltation as he had stood staring up at the little black 
figures crooked over the yards and watched the grey 
sails loosen and unfold and finally come clanking, creak¬ 
ing, flapping and ballooning down, till they made vast, 
bulging oblongs between the tapering yards and were 
securely held in place by a system of blocks and braces. 

The unerring skill with which each man selected one 


SOLO 


97 


rope from a bewildering choice and made it fast to its 
allotted pin! The nonchalance of perilously poised fig¬ 
ures! The lusty shouts from deck to topmast! The 
queer falsetto break in the voices as arms strained and 
backs arched to overcome the resistance of enormous 
canvas folds! The picturesque oaths and the strange 
jargon of “buntlin’s” and “gaskets”! The gathering 
momentum, proved by the speed at which bits of sea¬ 
weed were left astern! The sheer romance of endow¬ 
ing with life this cumbersome mass of iron and wood! 
The heart-catching wonder of feeling oneself borne 
along by the wings of a monstrous bird! What an in¬ 
comparable setting for a new movement in the theme of 
life—life more abundant than anything one could have 
dreamed! 

The tow-boat had screamed its farewell, and through¬ 
out the yellowish-grey afternoon, the sails had been set. 
Night had descended and phosphorescent glints had be¬ 
gun to appear over the side before the last order of 
“Ay, belay that!” had been given, the yards brought into 
final alignment to the tune of strange, German-sound¬ 
ing heaving-cries, and the weary double watch had 
slouched forward for supper. Then Paul, replacing the 
last of his crockery in the pantry racks, hanging cups on 
hooks in the ceiling, mopping up a crumby shelf and 
proceeding to fill his tiny cabin lamp with oil, had begun 
to wonder whether- 

He relived the experience of that first evening. Per¬ 
haps if he hurried off to bed! he had thought. The 
water bottles in the captain’s bathroom had been filled, 
the captain’s blankets turned down and the saloon lights 
lowered; the mates’ cabins had been seen to—what a 
filthy reek of tobacco in the corridors! 

Perhaps, if he undressed quickly and got straight- 

If they hadn’t put such silly dashboard-things at all 
the doors! Would one ever learn to step over them 




98 


SOLO 


without stumbling? Oh, dear, what endless see-saw¬ 
ing! Up and down, up and down, relentlessly, and the 
heavy drawers groaned, the lamps swung patiently, in 
their sockets. The smell of oil! The strong, clean 
smell of tar and hemp in the store-room as one replaced 
the tin of kerosene in its frame—everything had a frame 
or a rack at sea; even the dining-table, in case the 
plate should slide off! Once in one’s cabin—-but it was 
away at the other side of the saloon, down another cor¬ 
ridor, next to the lazaret—a long way. “A long wa-ays 
from home!” Sometimes, like Becky, he felt ‘like a 
motherless chile!” Dare he put down the lamp a min¬ 
ute? Terrible to set the ship afire! 

Oh, dear! Would there be anyone on deck to see, in 

cas€ - After all, it was dark out there—the lee side. 

Would it be safe to try and blow out the lamp, or would 
the act of blowing tend to release the muscular control 
—that drawn-in tension- 

He had reached the lee side just in time. 

By standing on the huge iron “double post thing”— 
would they call it a cleat? No, not that, something 
more nautical; “bits,” that was it—one’s shoulders 
cleared the side. Rather comfortable, standing on these 
bits, pressed against the teak shelf-thing in which holes 
were bored for belaying pins, which were like “men” 
in the game called “cribbage.” What a long slow rhythm 
to this incessant teetering; it seemed minutes be¬ 
tween the rise and fall, and for all the see-sawing, the 
deck had a permanent slant—one would have to walk 
uphill to get back to the cabin door. One would be walk¬ 
ing uphill all the way to Australia. 

It hadn’t lasted long. But how it made your eyes 
smart! Those big pilot-crackers in the pantry locker 
—they would help make up for a lost supper. Thank 
Heaven nobody had seen. 

Would one be all right in the morning? Surely. 


SOLO 


99 


“See-saw, Margery Daw-” If Gritty could only 

have foreseen, when singing that little song! Gritty— 
Hale’s Turning. Already they seemed like a dream. 

The second day had started badly, for in bringing 
breakfast aft he had unwisely contemplated a daub of 
porridge on the lid of a bowl. The sea had seemed quite 
needlessly busy; the decks cold, wet, and foolishly un¬ 
stable. He had felt greenish and nibbled pilot bread 
rather desperately, and it had been hard to laugh at their 
talk of swallowing raw pork, but there had been so much 
to do! The old man had spent hours demonstrating 
how the corners were to be mopped, how the soda and 
borax were to be mixed, the brass polished, the linoleum 
scrubbed, had shown him where the stores were kept, 
revealed lockers under settees, explained how the mattress¬ 
es were to be turned and the blankets tucked in. And 
one’s head had ached, ached, ached—see-saw, ache, ache 
—whilst heavy loads of water dashed against the iron 
walls, hissing and spluttering at closed ports, and it was 
stuffy, and the old man was saying, “Once a week,” and 
the Lord only knew what he was referring to. 

Washing up the greasy platters was horrible. The 
serving at table was easy enough, but the white jacket 
was too long in the sleeves—Otto, his predecessor in 
office, being six feet tall. 

Otto, who was now an ordinary seaman, had taken a 
whole hour out of his watch below to come and scrub 
the floors of the mates’ rooms for him—and all because 
he had been able to chat with Otto in German. The 
sailors had professed to scorn the language, but his 
knowledge of it had given him a prestige, which was in¬ 
creased when he tied intricate knots Mr. Silva had 
taught him. Neither of these accomplishments had re¬ 
ceived adequate recognition in Hale’s Turning. At last 
Aunt Verona’s Mondays and Wednesdays were bearing 
fruit—as everything instigated by Aunt Verona had a 



100 


SOLO 


way of doing. At the least they had won him a powcr- 
ful ally in the forecastle. 

Those floors! The saloon and the captain’s bedroom 
and bathroom were spotless—a pleasure to do them out. 
But the mates! They chewed tobacco. On the floor, 
within convenient reach, were brass receptacles—but the 
mates were appallingly bad shots! Whenever it came 
time to scrub those two tiny floors, Paul found it neces¬ 
sary to think about something miles away, or hum 
strenuously—not too strenuously, for in this new world 
somebody was always asleep—while he slathered and 
brushed and slaped; for if he let himself dwell on the 
situation in hand—well, it meant another hasty exit, and 
one couldn’t always pretend to be looking over the side 
for jelly-fish! 

After the third or fourth day, the see-sawing had be¬ 
come less annoying, and the emergency pilot-crackers 
crumbled to powder in his pockets. But every day he 
discovered new areas of brass to be polished. The 
people who had fitted forth the Clytemnestra had shown 
a maddening partiality for this metal. It covered the 
silly dashboards that blocked progress from cabin to 
cabin; it embellished every door; it encircled every port¬ 
hole ; it was twisted into fantastic settings for lamps and 
barometers, with myriad angles and crevices that caught 
the white paste and defied your efforts to dislodge it, 
whereupon you delivered yourself, sotto voce, of robust 
oaths which would have startled the eaves of 
Hale’s Turning, but which seemed meet and fitting 
at sea. 

That he could swear with an untroubled conscience 
illustrated the quality of this new plane of existence. 
Here oaths and ribaldries that would formerly have 
crisped his hair had no more consequence than the spray 
which leapt over the sides. Like spray they evaporated, 
leaving a tang of salt which was not unpleasant—he 


SOLO 


IOI 


even licked his arms, as Mr. Silva’s cow licked rock salt 
in the corner of the pasture. 

In Hale’s Turning such allusions had menaced the 
neat precarious cohorts of his childish ideals, like vandal 
dogs among tin soldiers. They had riled waters which, 
since the dawn of consciousness, had been limpid. 
Walter’s stories, the minister’s patronage, the evangelist’s 
religious debauchery, Miss Mason’s myopic dogmatism, 
the head master’s coercion, had aroused his scorn, be¬ 
cause they fell below the twenty-four-carat standard of 
fitness that prevailed in the privacy of Aunt Verona’s 
kitchen. Thrust into a civilization adapted to the needs 
of little Nova Scotia at large, and bereft of the touch¬ 
stone of Aunt Verona’s interpretative faculty (even 
Aunt Verona had not assayed half the specimens of 
truth-ore he might have submitted), he had been shocked 
by the divergence between his notion of true gold and 
the base alloy in public currency. Having been nourished 
for twelve years on dishes seasoned to his palate, then 
brusquely confronted with dishes from which he had 
been spared by guardian angels, he had been nauseated. 
He had eyed them with the candour of a child whose 
idealistic development had not been hampered,. and had 
immediately detected adulterations, which he with child¬ 
like inexorableness condemned. To have accepted the 
dishes would have meant swallowing the adulterations 
for the sake of a few honest currants and cloves, or per¬ 
suading himself that adulterated food was the most 
wholesome, as all the other adolescents seemed to be 
doing. But such a course would have been a repudiation 
of Aunt Verona’s kitchen, would have implied that its 
eclecticism had been some sort of hoax, a sham as petty 
as the talk of gold cobble-stones in heaven. That con¬ 
stituted a reductio ad absurdum, for nothing in life could 
shake his faith in Aunt Verona’s kitchen. Whether the 
method of living he had learnt there were right or wrong 


102 


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it was at least the only method possible for him, and for 
no conceivable bribe would he think of going back to 
the beginning and starting all over again. 

He could improve his method, adapt it to his growth, 
but he could no more change it than he could change 
the colour of his eyes. Tiens! Phoebe, the day of the 
party, had been in doubt about the colour of his eyes 
and to be on the safe side had given out that they were 
“Uh—blue,” like all the other vague eyes in the world. 
Similarly, society, in doubt about the nature of his 
method of life, had, to be on the safe side, sought to 
make him conform to a rule-of-thumb method fit only 
for bullies and dunces and nonentities incapable of self¬ 
navigation. In Aunt Verona’s kitchen, year by year, he 
had felt his theme becoming clearer, stronger, more 
soaring; his long hours of practice and his miscellaneous 
reading, his days of German and French, his ambling 
talks with Mr. Silva and engrossing arguments with 
Mark Laval, his sentimental exploits and solitary wan¬ 
derings in the fields, his excursions into the world of 
day-school and church and his nightly draughts from 
Aunt Verona’s well of wisdom—all had contributed har¬ 
monies, rhythms, and sonorities to the theme, and he felt 
that a clearly defined movement in the vast composition 
had come to an end with Aunt Verona’s death. In 
Halifax he had hoped to commence a new movement 
which, if not a variation on the original theme, should 
at least put forward a theme in keeping with it and de¬ 
velop the opening ideas in some progressive manner. 
Instead, he had heard but feeble reiterations of out¬ 
grown configurations drowned in a discordant chorus. 

Whereas here, on the scudding sea, he was in a 
position to sing forth his theme “full organ.” Here 
the raw materials of life were at hand, to be dealt with 
as instinct, and not arbitrary authority, should dictate. 
Authority in this little world was a force which directed 


SOLO 


103 


you to “do” a brass knob again because you had done it 
badly the first time, which reminded you to moisten the 
linen before pressing it, which told you to look sharp 
and scolded if the soup was cold—a force which was 
usually reasonable, tolerably kind, irksome of course, 
but quite understandable at its worst, a force which in 
no sense meddled with your theories, which made no in¬ 
decent assaults on your principles, which never obliged 
you to climb down from the walls of your mental castle 
to be a mere “dirty rascal.” Ideals were hurled at you 
here, and you took your choice, without coercion; your 
convictions were scoffed at by burly, good-natured 
grown-ups, but you were not asked to report to the 
captain “at three o’clock” and retract them. 

True enough, in this world you performed many acts 
for the sake of what the French master had called esprit 
de corps. You lent a hand at the main brace, for in¬ 
stance, if you happened to be on deck when the mate 
was wearing ship—or you ran up to the poop and manip¬ 
ulated the main royal and upper topgallant braces all by 
yourself. But that sort of co-operation didn’t cheapen 
you in your own estimation, as the j’ai-tu-as-il-a, sort 
most certainly did. On the contrary, lending a hand on 
deck, humble and brawny co-operation though it was, 
added a pleasant new sonority to your theme, and cer¬ 
tainly did more for your muscles than dipping and lung¬ 
ing in Gym to the tune of “Won’t you come home, Bill 
Bailey?” or “Put me off at Buffalo.” 

Moreover, in this world you learned plenty of things 
from the beginning: you learned, for instance, that 
there was no such thing as the “key of the keelson, 
and that you had been sent to ask the old man for it 
merely that a dozen tarry and salty men-babies might 
split their sides with laughter at your greenness, but you 
were much more willing to learn useless things of this 
sort than the useless or pernicious things Miss Mason 


104 


SOLO 


had to teach, for in the former case there was no ques¬ 
tion of betraying a miraculously gifted aunt. 

It was with some such inventory as this, though the 
realization of it was present to him in the nebular form 
of feeling rather than the precision of formulated 
thought, that Paul accounted for his nonchalance in the 
face of bloody oaths and smutty stories, and he breathed 
deep draughts of his freedom as he sat in the bows of 
the barque and gazed far out at the horizon. When his 
mind went back to the life he was forswearing, it 
went straight to the little village, without pausing in the 
painful city. He pictured Aunt Verona’s twisted smile 
and kind eyes. He saw the glass monuments flashing 
at Becky’s ears, and heard her unearthly growlings give 
place to the cadences of “Sometimes I feel like a mother¬ 
less chile, a long wa-ays from ho-o-ome”—Becky whose 
bursts of song were more musical to the inch than Miss 
Todd’s Ave Marias to the yard—poor gurgling Gertrude 
who called him “Paul dear.” 

He wistfully recalled the night when he had stolen 
roses from the Ashmill gardens and kept a bud for 
Phoebe Meddar. His tenderness toward Phoebe had in 
no wise suffered at the hands of the boy who out¬ 
manoeuvred him. Phoebe burying her straight little nose 
in Walter’s bouquet was as precious to him as Phoebe 
in any other pretty pose. For that matter he earnestly 
guessed she had loved the blossoms because they were 
lovely, not because Walter had given them to her. 

And Gritty—vulgar, loyal, tigerish, inimitable Gritty! 
She had got the letter before this, and all Hale’s Turning 
must have heard. Dr. Wilcove might even at this mo¬ 
ment be holding a pow-wow with the head master while 
he, Paul Minas, alias Paul Laval, was—according to the 
second mate—“somewheres about the same latitude as 
Baltimore.” Rather rough on old boy Wilcove—but he 
would soon forget about his troublesome ward and pass 


SOLO 


105 


the collection plate till Kingdom Come, while Miss 
Todd’s G’s grew squeakier and squeakier and the min¬ 
ister served up the rechauffe sermons of his youth. 

He left his anchor seat to lean over the iron railing, 
gazing into the liquid mountains that flung themselves 
up against the curving bow. Three miles deep! He 
tried to think his way down to the bottom. From Hale’s 
Turning to Bridgetown was nine miles—a third of the 
distance would be as far as the shanty where the blind 
Indian made baskets out of sweet grass and the gipsies 
camped in summer. Down, down—he could think down 
as far as the distance from Aunt Verona’s to the school- 
house—down, down—to the church and Miss Todd’s and 
up the hill? No, his mind wouldn’t sink any farther 
than Gritty’s gate, where a demure little girl was saying, 
“I’m sorry about your auntie, Paul.” 

The turquoise strip had expanded. The water was 
changing from steel grey to steel blue. And the ship 
drove on, while one’s thoughts glided and circled like the 
gulls, without getting tired or lost. On and on un- 
flaggingly towards the blue horizon. The Clytemnestra 
was abandoning the autumnal rigours of the north for 
the south’s warm promise, bearing one towards know¬ 
ledge and achievement, like the kindly white bear in the 
tale called East of the Sun and West of the Moon. 

A resounding bell made him jump. Good Lord! 
Quarter to four. That uproar in the forecastle was 
Fritz calling the first mate’s watch. The old man would 
be looking for his tea, and might peek into the pantry 
and discover the bottle of limejuice swiped from the 
storeroom! 

He descended the iron ladder, running the length of 
the main deck till he came to the mainsail-sheet stretched 
across his route. When it was slack, he balanced on it, 
for the fun of being jerked into the air as the bellying 
sail snapped it taut. A black kitten was playing 


io6 


SOLO 


“Mouse” with a frayed end of manilla, trying vainly to 
make Mother evince a spark of interest. Paul thought 
of Becky’s black baby whom he had once tried so hard 
to visualize in heaven—a little coon angel! Would the 
old cat sit blinking on the fife-rail if her piccaninny 
should pounce a few inches too far and go shooting 
through the scupper hole? 

From the grating which ran forward from the poop 
to the standard compass, Paul suddenly noticed the old 
man frowning down at him. 

“What about my tea, steward?” he inquired. 

“Yes, sir, in a minute. It’s drawing.” 

This was inaccurate, but the young steward was con¬ 
fident of being able to smuggle the empty teapot to the 
galley under his loose jacket. Just so, a young organist 
had known how to improvise a modulation bridging his 
private reverie with the celebration of a rite. 

2 

On and on, striving toward the south but ever frus¬ 
trated by winds which made it necessary to veer south- 
south-west or south-east-by-east. Paul had mastered 
the psychology of those that go down to the sea in ships 
and was no longer surprised to hear his mates curse the 
old man in one breath for making them unbend stout 
sails and replace them by worn, fair-weather sails, then, 
in the next breath, commend him for his thrift. And 
when, after thoughtful examination of some speck on 
the horizon, the old man gave an order to take in the 
royals and topgallantsails, and perhaps even the foresail 
and mainsail, Paul knew that the incarnadined phrases 
dropped by the men clambering up the shrouds like tired 
gorillas, while ostensibly aimed at the old man’s head, 
were in reality meant for the capriciousness of fate. The 
expedition with which they took in sail proved deep- 


SOLO 


107 


seated if grudging faith in their captain’s flair for a 
storm. 

Once, at dead of night, when Paul was seated on the 
hatch amidships listening to Otto’s tales of schooldays 
in Bremen, the old man made a portentous appearance 
on deck, his pyjamas looming in the moonlight. A mo¬ 
ment later the second mate was roused and the watch 
below turned out. Grumbling and adjusting their 
sheath knives, the men straggled forth and took to the 
rigging. Then the moonlight was cut off as when a slide 
is drawn across a dark-lantern, the vessel shivered, a cold 
breath crept into pockets of canvas, and soon there was 
a commotion aloft, a clanking and flapping and knocking 
of blocks and tackle that reminded Paul of a panic in a 
stable. The ship heeled over steeply and drove ahead. 
Paul remembered the open ports in the cabin and flew aft 
to screw them to. On his return the wind rushed at him. 
The shrouds hummed like tuning forks and from perches 
high above the ghostly wall of canvas came faint falsetto 
yohoings mingled with an affrighting flow of blasphemy, 
which was drowned in the increasing roar of wind and 
sea. 

Even in the shelter of the main deck, Paul had diffi¬ 
culty in gaining the mate’s side to help with the letting 
out and making fast of lines, and when the situation 
had been saved and the yards gleamed faintly like the 
limbs of a dancing skeleton, while human insects groped 
their way along slack footholds imprisoning ends of rope, 
the mate stooped and bellowed in his ear, “Clumsy bas¬ 
tards, this squall has put the fear of God into ’em!” 
Whereupon Paul divined that the same holy emotion had 
penetrated into the heart of the mate, and he wondered, as 
he clung to a stanchion for support, whether this “squall” 
might not compare favourably with the cataclysmal hur¬ 
ricanes that had struck other ships. 

Although the poop was out of bounds to anyone but 


io 8 


SOLO 


the old man, the helmsman, and the officer on duty, Paul 
for once ventured to ascend the steps. The captain 
stood beside the binnacles, his grim, vigilant, bearded 
face revealed in the glow of the lamps. Belatedly Paul’s 
sense of duty revived and he dived into the companion- 
way to fetch the old man’s oilskins and seaboots. These 
were donned without a word of acknowledgment, but 
Paul knew that his thoughtfulness was appreciated, and 
accepting the abnormal circumstances as a special license 
remained at the break of the poop, clinging to the rail 
and bracing himself against the blast. The old man had 
altered the course, letting the ship drive before the storm. 

A crackle of lightning, as bright as though it had been 
touched off by a photographer, revealed the denuded out¬ 
line of the vessel, making her seem as grotesquely tiny 
as she had, in the dark, seemed gigantically big. With 
only the topsails and staysails set, floundering in foam- 
tipped seas of greenish putty she reminded Paul of a 
little ship in a bottle, like the model Otto was making 
for him. Before he could account for this discrepancy 
there came a grinding, splintering, exploding crash, as 
though all heaven had been riven asunder. He crouched 
in the belief that a mast had given way and would come 
down with its trappings of wood and steel to annihilate 
him. Impossible that mere thunder could be so close, 
so ear-splitting and heart-shaking! He waited with tense 
muscles for the next flash, and rejoiced in the deluge 
that swept across the decks and drenched him to the 
skin. 

Until dawn he maintained his position on the poop, 
absorbed in the ruthless spectacle, exultantly aware of 
his puniness, glorying in the thought that, with a slight¬ 
ly increased concentration of wrath, the elements might 
engulf him in one swirl of wreckage. Tons of water 
tossed themselves on the deck below and, failing to stave 
in the tarpaulined hatches, seethed from scupper to scup- 


SOLO 


109 


per in search of exits, that they might return to the 
assault in more overwhelming force. If they only would! 
Paul caught himself “rooting” for the wind and waves, 
inciting them to greater and greater violence. He was 
almost sure that years hence, when he was skipper of 
some fine ship, he would recall this occasion and say, 

“I mind one night aboard the old Clytemnestra - 

By the time the first grey streaks of light were steal¬ 
ing into the dishevelled sky, the wind, although it would 
still have seemed hurricanic in other circumstances, had 
abated, and only the colossal seas were animated by the 
hope of smashing the toy man had sent to defy them. 
The captain had gone below, and Paul reluctantly fol¬ 
lowed to snatch a little sleep. In the musty corridors 
he had a different impression of the storm. The sides 
were trembling with each brutal attack, and the waves, 
sliding upwards, smothered the ports with a sickly gur¬ 
gle. In his cabin, books and “gear” of all sorts had 
been flung to the floor and his canvas chair was upside 
down in a corner. With the fore and aft pitching, the 
lamp in its brass socket strove to turn somersaults. 
What if the captain had not appeared on deck during 
that talk with Otto—how long ago it seemed! Would 
the mate have seen the danger in time? 

Paul shivered. The muffled uproar lost its glamour 
it was rather like being buried alive—and he no longer 
desired the storm to do its worst. Water had forced 
its way into the cabin, soaking strips of carpet and 
that meant extra work. He threw aside his drenched 
garments, towelled himself, and got into pyjamas a 
cast-off suit of the old man’s well reefed. 

It had been the most exciting night of his life, and 
he was tired. 

On and on. Until propitious northern “Trades” were 
encountered, the pencil in the chart-room recorded a 
sharp zigzag. Then, to a point near the equator, the 



no 


SOLO 


course proceeded in a straight line, representing blue, 
golden, foam-flecked days when steady progress had 
made for a settled routine. When the Trade Winds 
petered out, a tropical languor stole over the ship, and 
she could do nothing but roll in the long glassy swell 
under an ardent sun, while the sails, damp from swift 
recurring downpours, slapped against masts and cordage, 
then, as the vessel dipped forward, filled out with their 
own dead weight, drawing in the slack sheets with a 
whip-like snap. The rudder punctuated the long rhythms 
by dull kicks that sounded like the distant slamming 
of a barn door. 

See-saw, see-saw—but it was now the drowsy teeter¬ 
ing of a “painted ship upon a painted ocean.” How 
those sullenly memorized verses of The Ancient Mariner 
came to glowing life! One day Paul caught a molly¬ 
coddle, which Otto said was nearly as big as an albatross, 
by means of a baited, triangular ring of tin, into a 
corner of which it thrust its hooked beak. Keeping the 
line taut, he had drawn the bird aboard. Once on deck 
it was unable to fly away, because there was no air pur¬ 
chase for its wings. It declined food and drink. The 
black kitten, peering around a corner of the house, 
humped its back at the apparition of a ten-foot spread 
of wing, and ran for its life, hiding in the hollow of the 
bowsprit under the forecastle head. Paul finally lifted 
the bewildered bird to the rail and it flew away, little the 
worse for its adventure. He had, nevertheless, felt guilty 
during its captivity, and that night dreamt it hung about 
his neck while Chips and the cook cursed him with fever- 
glazed eyes. 

Merciless heat, a soft azure sky, towers of canvas mir¬ 
rored in a field of gently undulating sapphire—and, on 
boatswain-chairs hung over the sides, men scraped and 
hammered at flakes of rust, applying great swathes of 
vermilion paint. At close range, if you stood on the 


SOLO 


in 


fat iron bits and gazed into the sea, you could detect an 
amethyst tinge in the water as the rays of the sun probed 
down, revealing in the depths flecks and shreds, like the 
motes in sunbeams. You looked into the heart of a cir¬ 
cle of mixed water and light, warmest and most ame¬ 
thystine at the centre and becoming less translucent, and 
colder in tint, towards the rim of vision, like the misty 
halos surrounding street lamps. Then perhaps an olive 
shadow would writhe across the circle, and you would 
tease yourself by imagining that you had, after all, 
obeyed an impulse to tie the end of a lee brace about 
your waist and dive overboard for a swim. If you had! 
Ugh! For however cautiously those shadowy monsters 
might approach a bait of salt pork, you had no assur¬ 
ance that they were abstinent in the case of cabin-boys 
seductively browned by the sun! 

Swansen, the Swede—the old man referred to all 
foreigners as “dis-and-datters”—'was drawing bucket¬ 
fuls of water which Otto poured down a pipe leading to 
the captain’s bathroom. The sun wrapped itself about 
its victims. For twenty-four hours there had been no 
stirring of air, except for little rushes caused by the sails 
as they collapsed against the shrouds. The ship rocked 
like some canopied cradle in a bowl of jelly. The cap¬ 
tain, whose hobby was sailmaking, was seated on the 
poop with needle, beeswax and palm, at work on a 
mending job. 

The tank was filled, Otto screwed down the brass 
plate, and as he pattered forward, his enormous, bare 
feet stuck to the tar that bubbled up between the smooth 
planks. He seemed unaware of it. He was incredibly 
tough, as he was incredibly tall, ugly, powerful, and good- 
natured. His face was distorted in a friendly grin that 
revealed gaps between his teeth and wrinkled the narrow 
space between his piggy blue eyes and reddish curls. Swan- 
sen had drawn two buckets more than necessary. Otto 


SOLO 


112 

picked them up and was about to descend from the 
poop when Paul ran to the foot of the steps and begged 
for a shower-bath. After glancing towards the old man, 
Otto obligingly emptied the buckets over the naked 
shoulders of his protege. The water was colder than 
it looked. Paul gasped and cavorted about the broiling 
deck, leaving a trail and making a clumping noise with 
the slop-chest slippers into which his feet were thrust. 
Then he grabbed his basket, vaulted to Otto’s shoulders, 
and was borne forward. 

Dinner was not yet ready to be dished up, and to es¬ 
cape the heat of the galley Paul mounted the forecastle 
head to look for the sail which had been sighted during 
the morning. It was still on the horizon, gleaming like 
a tiny pearl. In the absence of a breeze, both ships were 
at the mercy of whatever current there might be. After 
weeks of isolation the prospect of passing another ship 
was of the essence of romance. 

While serving dinner, Paul heard the captain report 
a change in the barometer that gave promise of a breeze, 
rather than a mere repetition of futile showers. And, 
by the time he had finished washing up, a ripple was 
passing like a film over the sapphire, broken by a million 
golden glints. The ship responded, and for a welcome 
change slid through the water, overtaking great opales¬ 
cent jelly-fish—“Portuguese men-o’-war”—and leaving 
a little wake of bubbles astern. “About three knots,” 
Paul estimated, as he leaned over the side and shook the 
crumbs from the tablecloth. 

The sail locker was a most satisfactory retreat. It 
could be ventilated by two portholes, and the folds of 
canvas provided a safe, comfortable privacy in which to 
consume stolen fruits: tinned cherries and grapes and 
asparagus. All that was lacking was an adequate sup¬ 
ply of books. The dog’s-eared paperbound volumes from 
the mates’ cabins were dismal fare, and the captain’s 


SOLO 


ii3 

shelves were richer in works on tides, soundings and 
cloud formations than in works of fiction and poetry. 

In the beginning the captain had been a little forbid¬ 
ding in manner, and Paul, to his dying day, would not 
forget the look that had been turned on him when he 
had so far forgotten himself as to sit on a corner of 
the bench at the dining-table while the captain regaled 
the mate with an enthralling yarn. The old man hadn’t 
reprimanded him in words, but had simply stopped talk¬ 
ing and waited, in surprise but not anger, and Paul had 
risen, a wave of shame surging over him. His cheeks 
burned and his heart had seemed to leap out. The cap¬ 
tain had resumed the tale, and Paul had walked quickly 
from the saloon with his tray, passed the pantry-door, 
and gained the deck with some confused intention of 
flinging himself and the crockery into the hissing sea, 
to perish with the death of his self-esteem. He might 
grow up to be a criminal and be condemned by his peers, 
but never again could he experience quite such an over¬ 
whelming sense of humiliation as he had been reduced to 
by that mute reminder of his menial estate. It was the 
first time he had thought of it as menial, and it had 
indeed been rendered so by his witless lapse. 

A few days later there had been a momentous inter¬ 
view. Running to his cabin with his mind full of some 
errand, Paul had found the captain examining the big 
gold watch which for once he had forgotten to conceal. 
The sight gave him the feeling in his spine that he 
might have experienced had an umbrella suddenly 
snapped shut over his head. The old man was staring 
at the Dutch inscription inside the case as though he were 
seeing a ghost. 

“Where did you get this?” he demanded. 

“My father left it to me/’ Paul confessed, through 
sheer inability to say otherwise. What excuse could he 
offer for having it with him, when he had sworn in Hali- 


SOLO 


114 

fax that he had pawned all his possessions? The cap¬ 
tain would think him a thief as well as a liar, yet he could 
no more have lied at this juncture than he could have 
poisoned the food. 

“Was your father Captain Andrew Minas?’’ the old 
man asked. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“How many other lies have you told me?” 

Paul’s eyes dropped. “None, sir, since leaving port.” 

The captain replaced the watch on the dresser. “See 
here, boy,” he admonished, “you’ve done your work 
ship-shape, and I’m not finding fault. But you take and 
count ten before ever you go telling me any more fan¬ 
tastical yarns. What’s more, don’t leave that lying about. 
It ain’t as though it was an ordinary timepiece.” 

“No, sir.” 

“Away now to that job of varnishing.” 

As he was leaving, Paul couldn’t resist one question 
“Did you know my father, sir?” 

“Can’t say I ever knew a drunken lumber-jack by the 
name of Laval,” replied the old man. 

Since that memorable day the captain’s attitude had 
been less forbidding, though he was as impersonal as 
ever, and Paul redoubled in diligence. But the captain 
had made new concessions and Paul felt that an ordinary 
steward would not have been given lessons in the science 
of navigation nor allowed to take the sun with an 
extra sextant. The old man had explained the chronom¬ 
eters and compass, had entrusted him with the log-line, 
and even let him take the wheel on occasion. He had also 
turned over to Paul the slop-chest accounts, and every 
Saturday night, when the men came slouching aft for 
tobacco, clay pipes, knives, caps, and dungarees, it was 
Paul who acted as shopkeeper and importantly noted the 
debits in the captain’s book. 

Paul also recognized a special concession in the Cap- 


SOLO 


ii 5 


tain’s proposal that he should unlock the old square piano 
and play during spare moments in the dog-watches. And 
once he thought he detected a twinkle in the old man s eye 
when, at table, the mate had spoken of the Brandywine, 
the ship which Mark Laval had thought Paul owned. 

Paul lingered in the sail locker reading and ruminating, 
though it was time to take in the washing and see to the 
old man’s tea. He must open a new tin of fancy biscuits, 
and set aside some of the chocolate-coated ones for him¬ 
self. His conscience condoned petty larcenies in the store¬ 
room. In the first place, he could not stomach salt beef 
and porridge and bacon, and had to make up for such 
staples of sea diet by extra rations of tinned food. Be¬ 
sides, the captain always left the chocolate-coated biscuits 
on the plate. The cigars he had smuggled forward to 
Otto? Well, he hadn’t taken more than four, and after 
all the captain hadn’t paid for them; they were “come- 
shaw.” 

When he returned to the deck he found that the 
breeze had pleasantly transformed his circumscribed 
world. While the tea was steeping he ran to look for 
the sail. To his joy it occupied a greater space on the 
horizon. Apparently it was coming north, and as the 
wind was abeam for both ships they should, at the pres¬ 
ent rate, pass each other before dark. 

The appearance of a vessel was a phenomenon suf- 
ficient to give a festive air to the evening gathering on 
the fore hatch. After supper Paul hurried forward to 
hear scraps of talk. It was a strangely assorted group. 
Chips, an old Dane from Holstein, had migrated in his 
youth to escape the German yoke. In his shop, half 
buried in shavings, he had told Paul of the tyrannies 
borne by his family, and solemnly prophesied a day of 
deliverance for Denmark. These accounts had stimu¬ 
lated the cook to similar tales of oppression in Finland. 
Rather than submit to Russian rule, he had crossed to 


n6 


SOLO 


Stockholm and eventually gone to sea in Swedish ves¬ 
sels. Swansen, the Swede, showed no particular devotion 
to the country in which the Finn had taken refuge, but 
planned to make his way eventually to Seattle and become 
a good American. 

For Paul, the situation of Otto was the most interest¬ 
ing, for it involved a curious blend of sentiment and 
compulsion. Otto had run away from school five years 
previously, and within the next six months would have to 
return to Germany for a period of military or naval 
training. The captain had promised him his discharge 
on arrival in Australia. 

Paul had been a little shocked to learn that young men 
in European countries were conscripted in this fashion. 
It made him feel slightly apprehensive, as he had been 
wont to feel in the days of estrangement when he had seen 
John Ashmill and Skinny Wiggins making snowballs 
with stone kernels and storing them in the fastnesses of 
a snow fort. The thought of obligatory training was 
hard to reconcile with his preconceived notions of Otto’s 
fatherland; an abode of music and poetry; the eclectic 
land where Aunt Verona had passed an exquisite youth; 
where Werther had loved and sighed and wept; where 
kindly millers ground corn which kindly bakers made into 
cake, “der immer den Kindern besonders gut schmeckt.” 

“Why do they make you train?” he had asked Otto. 

“So we’ll know how to fight when the time comes.” 

“Is there going to be a war ?” 

“There are always wars.” 

“But why should any country want to go and fight?” 

“To protect its honour.” 

“How? Are there good countries and bad ones?” 

“Yes.” 

“What bad country is there for your country to fight?” 

“France is bad. And England.” 

“It isn’t! They aren’t!” 


SOLO 


117 

Otto smiled his good-natured smile. 

“Do you want to fight against France and England?” 
Paul insisted. 

“It isn’t me. I have no quarrel with them.” 

“Then why do you go back to train?” 

“Because my country commands me. Was kann ich 
dafur?” 

“You can just plain refuse,” Paul retorted. “Das 
kannst du dafur,!” 

“Then my poor old father would have to pay a fine to 
the authorities, and I would be a disgrace to him.” 

“I should think he’d rather pay a fine than have you 
turned into a slave. / wouldn’t let any country boss me 
about!” 

“You would do as all the others did.” 

“Not unless I felt like it! I’d run away. Why, you ran 
away yourself, from school. How could you do that, if 
you’re so fussy about obeying authorities?” 

“Running away from school is different. It affects 
only oneself. Running away from military service affects 
the country.” 

“Do you mean to say you’re willing to be bullied by 
your country just because it may need you to help kill 
people of a country which it thinks is bald, but which isn’t 
bad at all? I suppose you would have stayed at school 
and let the teachers bully you, had the fatherland decided 
its honour could be saved only if all the kids in Germany 
learned square root and decimals!” 

Otto was unmoved by this outpour. 

“Besides,” continued Paul severely, “fighting does no 
earthly good. Liars and thieves can win fights, if they’re 
strong enough, and they usually are.” He was thinking 
bitterly of frays behind the schoolhouse in Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing. “And it’s liars and thieves who prate about honour. 
I don’t believe honest people worry about theirs.” 

He recalled an occasion when Skinny Wiggins had 


n8 


SOLO 


pinned him to the wall and attempted to frighten him 
into conceding a moral advantage to which, as every boy 
within earshot knew, Skinny had not the slightest right. 
“Am I a liar ? Am I a liar ?” Skinny had reiterated with 
idiotic insistence. “Yes, you are,” Paul had truthfully 
replied, and his valour had merely earned him a bloody 
nose. 

He was strangely perturbed by this issue and pondered 
it long after his talk with Otto. Among other difficult 
points, just what did “country” mean? There might be 
bad kings and good kings, but surely a country was only 
land occupied by a collection of people, good and bad 
mixed! Suppose all the people in France went to live in 
Germany, and all the people in Germany went to live in 
France. Would the fact of their being on French soil 
make Germans bad, or would the advent of Germans 
make French soil good? He feared there was some terri¬ 
ble fallacy at the base of Otto’s contentions. 

Moreover, if France and England were bad, how could 
such splendid books be written in London and Paris? 
Englishmen and Germans must be very much alike. Otto 
should realize that, after having been two years on a 
British ship. 

More than ever Paul felt he must see all countries at 
close range, giving a wide berth to reefs of national 
prejudice, which was too like the clannish braggadoccio 
of the schoolyard. He had once heard Skinny Wiggins 
boasting to Mark Laval, “Aw, you dirty Canuck, my 
father can do your father, one hand tied behind his back!” 
Mark, in point of fact, had forthwith blacked Skinny’s 
eye, and Might, for once, had been Right. 

However Otto might reflect the conscriptive policy of 
European diplomats, the worst enemy of his fatherland 
could not have taken offence at any act of his. Chips, for 
all his anti-German bias, never hesitated to supply Otto 
with wood and tools for his “models,” while Fritz, a 


SOLO 


119 


gigantic German in the second mate’s watch, ruled the 
forecastle by sheer radiation of goodwill. 

Surrounding Otto on the hatch were seamen of various 
nationalities: the once beery hobo, who was Irish- 
Canadian; a dour young Cornishman known as “Dismal 
Jimmy”; a Scot; a Frisian who spoke a weird dialect; 
and a decrepit “hard case” from Cardiff who, though 
past the age of mating, beguiled the forecastle with tales 
of his amative exploits and the exploits of an amazing 
creature in Sydney known as Dirty Dora, the Sailors’ 
friend. 

That such an assortment could chat unconstrainedly, 
drinking like all the beasts of the jungle at a common 
pool which slaked their thirst for yarns, was a source of 
wonderment to Paul. Each had a grudge of some sort, 
yet when they were socially foregathered the grudges 
were sheathed, and differences of opinion Jed to no mani¬ 
festation more hostile than a satiric grin, a humorous 
broadside, or an incredulous hitching up of trousers. 

“M’n dee got to be shipmates togedder,” was the philo¬ 
sophic carpenter’s explanation to Paul. “Dont do to 
go monkey-shinin’ when dee’re all in de same boat. But 
Chips, a teetotaller, was inclined to saddle Rum with the 
responsibility for the world’s disasters. “When dee get 
ashore and get drunk,” he moralized, “dee suddenly re¬ 
member dee’re a different nationality as de oders, and dee 
start breakin’ each Oder’s heads. And next day de ol 
man got to go to de police court to find ’em. Men is 
more stoopid as animals.” 

This evening there was certainly no hint of discord. 
Otto had gone to fetch an accordion, and as if by magic, 
mouth-organs and concertinas made their appearance. 
Fritz and Chips sang German words to the tunes. Dis¬ 
mal Jimmy played a Jew’s harp. Paul performed on a 
comb covered with tissue-paper, interrupting the melody 
now and again to brush his tickled lips. And those who 


120 


SOLO 


had no better instrument beat time on stanchions with 
ringing steel marlin spikes. 

Paul winced as the accordions and mouth-organs played 
major intervals for minor, which they seemed unable to 
negotiate. But on the whole it was a stirring din. Cer¬ 
tainly Otto was a musician, and everybody followed his 
conducting with zest. A naive glow was reflected on the 
stolid faces. Paul recalled Mr. Silva’s notion of music 
as the soul’s esperanto. How Mr. Silva would have re¬ 
joiced in just such a concert! 

When Paul knew the words he abandoned his comb 
and sang, with the last vestiges of a boyish soprano. 
Some of the men danced thumpingly together, reminding 
Paul of the trained bear that came to Hale’s Turning 
every spring. A sailor called Shorty seized him as part¬ 
ner, but Paul couldn’t waltz, for Hale’s Turning had 
never countenanced anything so heathenish. He vowed 
he would learn. 

Between selections he kept watch for the approaching 
ship. From a pearly blot on the horizon she had gradu¬ 
ally taken form as a dark hull surmounted by a huge 
spread of canvas. For a time she had loomed high and 
higher, then the breeze had failed. The sky was flushed 
with an ardent rose screened by low-lying, etiolated brown 
clouds. High above the clouds were fields of pale jade 
and primrose, and near the horizon were palette swirls 
of lilac deepening to purple. Paul had feared that night 
would cut off the strange ship, when the man who had 
gone to take up his lookout duties reported lights ahead. 
At this announcement, he flew to the side and found the 
vessel only a short distance away. For hours she had 
seemed stationary, and now she was visibly creeping near. 

The concert was abandoned and the crew came to 
watch—deprecatingly. Paul attributed their attitude to 
diffidence. He knew they were excited, to a man. 

As the vessel slowly advanced, it was possible to make 


SOLO 


121 


out four masts, and finally her rig-—a four-mast barque, 
carry sky sails on the main and mizzen masts. Otto 
and Fritz recognized in her lines a German build, and the 
others were obliged on principle to differ. Then a perfect 
hush descended on the world, broken only by the faint 
crisp lapping of water and the sighing of canvas. 

The brown clouds had faded and were now stretched 
across the horizon like patches of ash over the glowing 
end of a cigar. Twilight was descending swiftly, and as 
the last hint of gold dissolved in the west the unknown 
ship, a towering black silhouette, came regally abeam of 
the Clytemnestra, not more than three or four ship- 
lengths away. At long intervals she inclined, like a queen 
acknowledging homage, her mastheads tracing imaginary 
curves against the vault. The horizon showed dully wine- 
coloured in the spaces between her sails. Little men were 
visible on deck. Faint strains of music could be heard 
across the water—the music of an accordion. 

Suddenly Fritz climbed a few steps into the rigging 
and broke the unearthly silence with a booming inquiry 
in German, his hands held to his face as a megaphone. 

Ears strained to catch the reply. A thrill shot through 
Paul and a lump came to his throat. 

Deliberately, Fritz boomed out another question, not in 
the voice full of humps and hollows that he employed in 
talking, nor the jumbled falsetto with which he marked 
time when pulling t at the head of the braces. It was an 
even tone that stretched out like a wire. And after tense 
seconds of waiting a similar voice, like a ghostly echo, 
made the return journey with answers and reciprocal in¬ 
quiries. Paul asked himself how Fritz dared stand forth 
in the presence of his mates and give such a personal 
exhibition; there was something gloriously immodest in 
the physical outpouring of sound. Paul felt that the 
Clytemnestra must be blushing for the prosaic nature of 
the information conveyed. 


122 


SOLO 


“It’s the Dornroschen” Fritz announced. “Bound for 
Hamburg. Thirty-one days out from Montevideo.” 

In a few moments the ship had passed. Paul’s eyes 
regretfully followed her. Hamburg, where his father 
had got Aunt Verona’s piano! “The Sleeping Beauty,” 
with twenty-five or thirty men aboard—another little 
floating world—like the Clytemnestra a living thing, los¬ 
ing herself in the softly encroaching gloom! It was 
beautiful; his throat ached and his eyes smarted from the 
sheer loveliness of the experience. 

The last hint of colour had gone. Night closed in and 
all that could be seen of the strange ship was a pin-point 
of light at the stern. She had vanished as quietly as a 
dream. The presence of another ship on this lonely 
ocean revived, for a moment, his old fear of 
the dark. 

He walked slowly aft. The concert had been half¬ 
heartedly resumed, although the second mate’s watch was 
preparing to turn in. As heard from the after quarters, 
the music had a haunting appeal. Distance lent enchant¬ 
ment to the harsh accordions. 

Hai-li, hai-lo; hai-li, hai-lo; 

Bei uns da geht’s immer also. 

The little tune was vulgar but somehow fitting. It was 
even beautiful, rendered so by the homely cravings it 
satisfied. Just such a tune had come across the water 
from the mysterious Dornroschen . And there were still 
many weeks of isolation before the cape could be rounded 
and the coast of Western Australia sighted. 

He wondered if there were some lad on that other ship 
—cabin-boy or apprentice—who had also been impressed 
by the beauty of the encounter, or had the old Clytem¬ 
nestra, with her three masts and her daubs of red lead, 


SOLO 


123 


looked too sfiabby against the eastern sky ? He wondered 
if that other boy, provided he existed, were wondering 
if there were any such boy as himself, Paul Minas! 
With a strange pang he hoped so„ 


V 


I 

One night early in January Paul kept an independent 
watch on the house deck, perched on the gunwale of a 
spare lifeboat. He would have preferred his favourite 
daytime seat on the anchor, but there was a rule against 
distracting the attention of the lookout. Despite a mod¬ 
erate fair breeze, the heat generated during the day still 
enveloped the ship. It was as though the gloom of the 
Indian Ocean were made of warm, impalpable wool. 
Some of the men had brought their bedding out on the 
hatches. Paul could not sleep when there was a pros¬ 
pect of a light being sighted before dawn. 

To think that the goal was less than a hundred miles 
distant, that with daylight the outlines of a new coast 
should be visible! The antipodes—the other side of the 
world! And only a year or two ago, it had been diffi¬ 
cult to grasp the conception that people in these latitudes 
did not feel like flies walking on a ceiling! 

On and on, with never a sign of lagging provided 
there was the ghost of a breeze to support her—good 
old Clytemnestra! A little weary, perhaps, but it was 
not her fault if barnacles thickened on her hull. Per¬ 
haps she was looking forward to the prospect of dry- 
dock as eagerly as any of her thoughtless crew looked 
forward to a fried egg and a pint of bitters in a pub. 

After nearly four months of unbroken horizons, the 
thought of the coming day was overpoweringly sweet. 

124 


SOLO 


125 


The four months had been wonderful enough in their 
own way. During that period Paul felt he had crossed 
the invisible meridian separating childhood from adoles¬ 
cence. Just as the Clytemnestra had brought him into a 
region of bright new stars and a more potent sun, so 
she had mysteriously brought him into a new personal 
hemisphere; the sun of his individuality bore down upon 
him more directly, and his vague desires shone forth 
in constellations. The second movement in the com¬ 
position of his life was well under way; the opening 
theme had been declaimed and sonorously amplified, and 
this lonely night watch was a sort of mental recitative, 
making a transition to the variation which would begin 
on the morrow, a variation which he could not quite 
foretell. That made the waiting breathlessly expectant. 

He was now thirteen years of age, but the moral 
experience of several years had been crowded into the 
interval since his twelfth anniversary. He felt much 
older in mind and body than when he had signed the 
articles, yet he enjoyed a freedom and buoyancy of spirit 
he had never known in those years which grown-ups 
referred to as the happiest. Men spoke lightly of care¬ 
free childhood. He regarded childhood as a period of 
bitter perplexity, of groping fears, of haunted, tear- 
stained nights, of tortuously developed principles and 
convictions, of brutal misunderstanding. 

What price the far-off nights when he had cried 
himself sick at the fear that his mother had been buried 
alive! The endless days when he had striven vainly 
to overcome his enmity towards John Ashmill! The 
months of feud against Walter Dreer with whom he 
yearned to become reconciled! The weeks when he had 
struggled with monsters called into being by Walter’s 
vile insinuations! Happiness, when every morning he 
had awakened to the sense of some ordeal! Happi¬ 
ness, when he had never entered the doors of a school- 


126 


SOLO 


house without a trace of dread, nor passed out through 
the gates without feeling reprieved! If running breath¬ 
lessly home from school, slamming the gate on a bar¬ 
baric world, and seeking protection in a kitchen peopled 
with fantastic images could be accounted as happiness, 
he had had happy moments—but at what cost! Had 
glib grown-ups forgotten their own childhood, or had 
they been different? Probably that was the answer: 
he, Paul Minas, was a freak. 

The four months had wrought a physical change, for 
he could now perform feats he would never have at¬ 
tempted in Gym. Moreover, his nautical lore had added 
cubits to his worldly stature. For the first time in his 
life he felt he occupied a classifiable status. True, he 
was a sailor with a difference, just as he had been an 
organist and a scholar with a difference. But being 
a sailor was a comfortable, inclusive estate in which 
there was accommodation for all the parts of one’s 
nature difficult to classify. 

In his information concerning ships and seafaring 
there were still vast gaps. At the same time, thanks 
to the old man and to his own aptitude, he knew more 
about navigation from the technical point of view than 
the oldest A.B. in the forecastle. And he could under¬ 
stand, if not execute, almost any order given on deck. 
The network of lines and tackle no longer baffled him, 
and he had ventured as far as the royal yard-arms in 
his desire to solve puzzles of construction. Ropes that 
had intrigued him he had followed to their sources, 
climbing hand over hand, or shinning aloft on converg¬ 
ing lines. Once the old man had reprimanded him for 
attempting to climb a rope which was not supposed to 
be made fast at the upper end, and which might have 
come away under his weight. He could steer by the 
wind or by the compass, except on rough days, when 
the wheel kicked so hard that his young arms were 


SOLO 


127 

overpowered. He had learned how to take dead reckon¬ 
ings and read portents in the sky. 

It was an engrossing study, but there had been hours 
when the monotony oppressed him. He had grown 
mortally weary of twenty-odd circumscribed minds, the 
unending yarns which, if not lacking in picturesqueness 
and variety of detail, were hopelessly similar in tone, 
being confined to some aspect of sea life or the deeds of 
seamen on land. His mates had few ideas left with 
which to surprise him, and Paul had discovered that 
the element of surprise was as necessary to mental prog¬ 
ress as salt was necessary in food. 

It was consequently with a very fever of elation that 
he strained his eyes through the velvety blackness. Fair 
winds had been blowing for days, following a series of 
storms encountered south of the Cape of Good Hope. 
The pencil record in the chart-room showed only a short 
space between the position at noon and the port of Fre¬ 
mantle. And now a propitious breeze was bearing 
them straight towards the promised land. 

“Birds of varigated plumage abound, but their cries 
are for the most part raucous. The songsters of Euro¬ 
pean groves are practically unknown in the Common¬ 
wealth,” Paul had read, and he wondered if he would 
see wild parrots perching on telegraph wires. He dis¬ 
liked parrots. But for them the boys of Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing would never have lurked around corners waiting to 
scream out at his approach, “Polly want a cracker, Polly 
want a cracker!” 

He wondered if Australians ate pancakes and corn- 
meal muffins and frosted walnut cakes. He wondered 
what Australian candy was like, and marbles and tops. 
Did they play Nobbies and Lacrosse and Duck on the 
Rock? Almost any strange custom might prevail in a 
country where even the seasons were upside down. 
Fancy being hot and sticky in January! While he was 


128 


SOLO 


clad in a cotton shirt, duck trousers and a pair of slip¬ 
pers, Walter Dreer and Gritty Kestrell were coasting 
down the snowy hill past Miss Todd’s, or skating figure 
eights on the marsh ponds under the railway trestle! 

On and on—east of the sun and west of the moon. 
A man stumbled aft to relieve his mate at the wheel. 
At intervals came the ghostly call from the bows, “All’s 
well,” followed by a gruff acknowledgment. 

At midnight the watch changed, but Paul merely 
snuggled to a more comfortable position on a thwart of 
the lifeboat. Despite his subdued excitement he was 
drowsy and thought of curling up in the hanging folds 
of a lowered staysail, when he was electrified by the 
cry, “Light ahead.” 

Feeling that circumstances justified a breach of the 
regulations, he scrambled down from the house and 
ran to see for himself. “Blimey!” exclaimed the look¬ 
out in a cautious whisper. “It’s Gentleman Jim out of 
’is bed. Smell the steak and kidney puddin’, did ’e?” 
“Where is it?” demanded Paul. 

“First turnin’ on the roight. Sign o’ the crown and 
anchor. Wut you gunna ’ave?” 

“Oh shut up, Shorty. Show me the light.” 

As a protest against the nickname, the lookout 
snatched Paul up, bore him to the rail, and pointed ahead. 
“Watch,” he directed. In a few moments Paul detected 
a tiny point lower than the stars and more golden in 
lustre, which disappeared like some stealthy signal. 
After long seconds it flashed again—and again. 

“At last!” he sighed, as the seaman put him down. 
“Oho! Y’ain’t old enough to ’ave a woman, you 
know.” 

“Is that so? And what could a little shorty like you 
do with one?” 

The reply was entrusted to the toe of an agile boot, 
but Paul ducked, and from the safety of the iron ladder 


SOLO 


129 


thumbed his nose. He found the mate pacing the poop, 
but didn’t dare ask all the questions in his mind, lest 
he be thought childish. 

The next few hours passed slowly, but with dawn 
came the sight so eagerly awaited—a low, slate-black 
shadow dividing the sky from an ocean all mother-of- 
pearl. At six o’clock Paul took tea to the captain’s room, 
and two hours later, when he went forward with the 
basket, the sun had dispelled the shadows, the water had 
become a yellowish jade, and the coast was revealed in 
a sand-coloured stretch, patched with green hollows. 
White clouds hovered over the hills, and everything was 
bathed in gold. The Clytemnestra had ceased to repre¬ 
sent the boundaries of the world, and was now a mere 
insect crawling painfully over a wrinkled pool. The 
captain peered through his telescope at a blob of smoke. 

“It’s a tug already,” remarked the mate as he came 
down to breakfast. “We’ll be alongside by noon.” 

Paul contrived to be on deck when the tow-boat 
approached within hailing distance.. He had never seen 
a sight more exhilarating than this sturdy tug as she 
reared and coughed and wallowed in the green waves, 
belching forth smoke. She was intensely alive, and her 
personality was not unlike that of an officious sheep- 

Thanks to the fair wind, which would have enabled 
him to sail to the very mouth of the Swan river, the old 
man drove a sharp bargain with the captain of the tow¬ 
boat To Paul’s astonishment his first question, when 
terms had been settled by the aid of a megaphone, was 
as to the outcome of “the war.” The old man seemed 
unaccountably pleased that somebody had licked some¬ 
body else. Paul had not even known they were fight¬ 
ing; but he was tremendously interested in the dis¬ 
covery that Australians—judging from the captain of 
the tow-boat—said “sile” for sail. 


SOLO 


130 

At the old man’s command, Paul ran up to the poop 
and threw out a sounding line to which one of the deck¬ 
hands, amiably—and a little patronizingly—smiling, at¬ 
tached a bundle of newspapers. Paul drew the packet 
aboard, with professional gestures, and the tug, with a 
clang of bells and a churning of the propeller, plunged 
forward, preparing to let out her thick hawser. 

Paul spread the newspaper on the chart-room desk. 
Such strange-looking sheets they were—not a bit like 
the Halifax Herald! The captain’s form loomed in 
the companion-way, and Paul ran off to make the beds, 
debating the mighty, jubilant, breathless alternatives: 
should he go first to see Vpronique, or Hamlet, or Miss 
Dolly Castles in Pinafore? 

2 

Never had trees been so green, roofs so red, nor life 
itself so promising. Even the bare island that lay off 
the coast had a personality, for “There,” said the pilot, 
“is where the Orizaba went down.” 

The sails were furled. The tow-boat had dropped 
back and made fast at the side to guide the helpless 
vessel through the channel of the river. Had water 
ever been as utterly flat as this? Paul wondered that 
it could float tall ships. 

That vivid brick building on the bank, surmounted 
by a short mast on which was a time-ball-—those vines 
with purple-blue flowers like the clematis that split 
down the walls of Gritty’s brown house thousands and 
thousands of miles away—but of a blueness! 

The gigantic black-funnelled liner moored to the 
quay—a P. and O. And ahead of her was a real battle 
cruiser! The only warship Paul had seen was a wheezy 
revenue cutter in Halifax. “That’s the Euryalis,” ex¬ 
plained the pilot, most satisfactory of men, “the flag¬ 
ship of the Australian squadron.” 


SOLO 


131 

Slowly past steamers, past warehouses, towards the 
innermost space of the quay, near the bridge which cut 
off the navigable portion of the river. It seemed hours 
before the ship was finally moored, a rat-guard placed 
on each hawser, the gangway adjusted. The captain had 
gone ashore with the quarantine officer. Stevedores, 
ship chandlers, butchers, and grocers were making their 
way aboard, and dinner was standing cold on the table. 
Men and horses, a thousand bewildering signs of the 
life lived on land! Paul was feeling the effect of his 
vigil, and chafed at the thought that he could not set 
foot on this enchanted soil until the day’s tasks were 
done, perhaps not then. Moreover, it appeared that 
one’s wages were not paid outright, but in driblets, at 
the captain’s discretion. For the first time he realized 
the significance of having signed on for a full voyage, 
which meant that his discharge and pay-day were 
contingent upon his returning to the home port, 
Liverpool. 

He was vaguely apprehensive. It would be just like 
old boy Wilcove to find out what ships had sailed from 
Halifax on the date of his disappearance. Paul was 
not sure whether or not Dr. Wilcove had any legal con¬ 
trol over him, but the man who was always referred to 
as his guardian, whatever that implied, might be fussy 
enough to take some measures toward compelling him 
to return. What if an Australian policeman should 
come aboard and march him off to the big P. and O. 
boat flying the blue Peter! His imagination was fired 
at the thought of travelling by steam through the Red 
Sea and being transferred in England to another 
splendid liner bound for Halifax. But Halifax! And 
Hale’s Turning! And school! Without seeing Aus¬ 
tralia ! 

He was tempted to bolt. In this little city—he now 
knew it was little, though from the mouth of the river 


132 


SOLO 


it had seemed boundless—he could find something to 
do, surely. But the old man! 

Paul returned to his broom and dust-pan. He couldn’t 
play the old man false, for somehow he was confident 
the old man wouldn’t play him false. Contact with the 
fine sailorliness of his captain had instilled in him a sense 
of sportsmanship. 

Not much chance of getting ashore to-night. But the 
stevedore had said they might be two months unload¬ 
ing. Then they would have to take on ballast before 
proceeding to Sydney for a cargo. There was plenty 
of time, and he was tired. It was strange to be mo¬ 
tionless. His bunk would not seem natural without the 
lulling sea-saw and the creaking of beams. And the 
§hip, made fast to a wharf, her yards projected against 
the walls of warehouses, seemed to have lost her very 
identity. 

Such quantities of sand as there were in the place! 
Enough to make the walrus weep! When the wind 
blew it drove in dusty clouds along the roads. And the 
low opposite bank of the river was a long stretch of 
pure sand, broken only by a few scrubby trees and 
amorphous buildings. 

The captain returned at supper time, followed by a 
man carrying bags of fruit for the cabin table. Paul 
could read nothing in the old man’s countenance, and 
under the stress of issuing orders the captain seemed 
oblivious of his existence. Piqued, Paul rang the supper 
bell with needless vigour. Then, on returning to the 
pantry, he heard a voice sharply calling, “Steward!” 

In his bedroom the captain was sorting out letters for 
members of the crew. “Take these forward,” he or¬ 
dered. “And these are for you.” 

Paul picked up two envelopes addressed “Master Paul 
W. Minas, care Captain Caxton, Br. Barque Clytemnes- 
tra, Fremantle, W.A.” 


SOLO 


133 


A few minutes later, in the pantry, with a sinking 
heart and tremulous curiosity, he opened them. One 
was from Dr. Wilcove! 

“My dear Paul, 

“Whatever possessed you to play such a prank? 
However, by the time this reaches you, you will have 
regretted your impulse as much as we have all regretted 
it, so I needn’t rub it in.” 

Regret it, forsooth! 

“I trust this will find you none the worse for your 
voyage.” 

None the worse! 

“Margaret Kestrell came to see me on receiving your 
letter. I’m bound to say I’m surprised that you chose 
to confide in a little girl rather than your guardian. I 
had had no hint of your difficulties at school until I 
hurried up to Halifax. It seems that there was mis¬ 
understanding on both sides, yet none, I feel sure, that 
could not have been adjusted.” 

“So?” This was an echo of Otto’s dialect. 

“However, that’s a closed chapter. What I now pro¬ 
pose, and indeed insist on, is that you return to consult 
with me concerning your education. You may not real¬ 
ize that as executor of your father’s will and that of 
Miss Windell, I am responsible for properties being ad¬ 
ministered in your interest until you come of age. So 
long as we here are responsible for your welfare, the 
least you can do is to render our task possible. Perhaps 
you can understand our anxiety, and our wish to regain 


134 


SOLO 


the confidence which, perhaps owing to our own negli- 
gence, we seem to have forfeited.” 

Paul felt guilty. 

“I am writing to Captain Caxton, who, as you doubt¬ 
less know, was with your father at the time of his death 
on the Brandywine ” 

Julius Priest! And the old man hadn’t let on! 

“I am also sending him a draft for £150-” 

Five times fifteen—$750—Gee-rusalem! 

“He will arrange passage home for you. I expect 
you to write me on receipt of this, and please believe me, 
my dear Paul, 

“Your affectionate guardian.” 

Paul replaced the letter in its envelope. On return¬ 
ing from the supper table with the remains of the first 
course—how they had pitched into the fresh beef!—he 
broke open the other letter: 

“Dear Paul, 

“three cheers my I wisht I was with you The 
doctor near fainted when I told him he went to halifax 
and when he come back I made him tell me your address 
to write to do you have to wear a sailor suit paul when 
you are comeing back I’m going to run away when I 
save enough money from my Sunday school collection 
money I hate here papa spanked me for catching me 
smokeing a pine cone I wunt forget you paul never 
nor the secrets nor nothing Paul Goodbye X X X O O O 
from Gritty.” 



SOLO 


135 


3 

When Paul was lighting the lamps that evening the 
captain looked up from his papers. “They seem to 
have been worried about you back in Nova Scotia,” he 
commented. 

“Yes, sir.” The match trembled in Paul’s fingers. 

“Your cock and bull story put rather a different face 
on matters, didn’t it?” 

Paul bristled and drew himself up with a tinge of 
theatricality. “I hope I’ve proved how much in earnest 
I was,” he said. 

The captain smiled and puffed at his cigar. “You’ve 
earned your wages all right. But I’m afraid you 11 have 
to go back.” 

Paul’s eyes smarted, and he had to remind himself that 
in a day or two he would be wearing long trousers. 

“I’d jump overboard rather than go back to Hale’s 
Turning,” he retorted. 

The captain tapped his cigar ash into a tray, and Paul 
could no longer control himself. 

“Oh, why are you on their side?” he cried. “If you 
were a’friend of my father’s, like Dr. Wilcove said, why 
do you want to send me back to a hateful, rotten, stuffy 
school? If you do, I’ll only run away again where 
nobody can find me, so you might as well not!” 

“Do you think your father and mother would have 
approved of your running away? 

Paul glanced up at the old man with a new interest. 
“Did you know my mother too, sir?” 

“For the matter* of that,” replied the captain, “I knew 
you, as well. I was mate with Captain Andrew when 
he took your mother and you on a voyage to Durban. 
You were pretty young then. From about one to one 
and a half.” 

Paul shrank weakly to a settee, forgetful of his stew- 


SOLO 


136 

ardship. His mouth was open, but he had nothing to 
say. Finally he exclaimed: 

“And you knew all the timer 

“Since the day when I saw your father’s watch lying 
on the table—the watch you forgot to pawn.” 

Paul winced at the needless thrust. If the old man 
only knew how he treasured the keepsake! 

“Do you think your mother would have been pleased 
at the thought of your leaving school so young?” 

“How do I know? I don’t think she would have ob¬ 
jected if she knew how stupid it was!” His only clue 
to his mother was through Aunt Verona, and Aunt Ver¬ 
ona had always seemed to be on his side. “Do you 
think she would have objected?” he inquired diffidently. 

“She was a rare one for books and music. That old 
piano there used to belong to her.” 

So that was why the old man had suggested his play¬ 
ing it in the dog-watches! His own mother’s piano! 
Verily, life was almost too painfully miraculous. Music 
was the weak spot in his armour. There had been mo¬ 
ments during the long voyage when he had yearned for 
the big piano in the playroom. But if it must come to 
a choice between music and the sea, between a life of 
practising and a life of seeing hundreds of new coun¬ 
tries, he could only decide in favour of the latter. In 
his mind, for months and months, had been running the 
phrase: “Qui n’oubliera jamais ces soirees de Munich 
et de Vienne” He, too, must see places that he would 
never be able to forget. What education could compare 
with a visit to cities steeped in music and romance, cities 
which had fostered rare spirits! Besides, education 
was largely a matter of books. He had learned ten 
times as much in Aunt Verona’s kitchen as he had learned 
from Miss Ranston and Miss Hornby. 

“I don’t see why I can’t read at sea as well as at 
school,” he argued. 


SOLO 


137 

The captain was non-committal. “Well,” he con¬ 
cluded, “it don’t do to decide rashly.” 

Paul felt that this remark might refer to his rashness 
in having run away. Tears threatened to break through 
his defences, as he got up from the settee. He was un¬ 
willing to leave the matter on such a dubious footing. 
He was wretched and craved some crumb of encourage¬ 
ment. 

“If you were my father, instead of you, sir,” he ven¬ 
tured, in husky tones, “would you think me awful for 
acting the way I have?” 

The captain rose from his chair and placed a hand on 
Paul’s shoulder. “Oh, I don’t know as I’d go that far,” 
he said. “At any rate, if I was your father, instead of 
me, I’d be a damn sight better man than I am . . . 
He’d a been pleased at the way you’ve kept the slop- 
chest accounts and done the brass. And, if he’d a gone 
for to blame you, you could a reminded him that he run 
away himself when he was a lad.” 

“Oh, did he?” Paul’s throat ached. He wanted to 
thank the old man for something, but didn’t know what, 
nor how. 

“Better turn in now,” advised the captain. 

4 

The dread that he might be sent home, tinging all his 
moods during the ensuing days, added a strange 
poignancy to Paul’s impressions. The little town with 
its narrow streets and low brick buildings was full of 
marvels. The commonest objects wore an aspect so 
different from corresponding objects at home that they 
acquired an abnormal intrinsic interest. Instead of ask¬ 
ing for candy you asked for lollies; instead of buying 
chocolate dudes you bought little cardboard boxes 
labelled “Fry’s” or “Cadbury’s.” You had to be 


138 


SOLO 


wary of half-crowns, for they were deceitfully like 
florins. 

Then the speech of these people! They said “thrup- 
pnse” for threepence, “frock” for dress, and “gaing for 
going. They called ice-cream “hokey-pokey” and served 
it in little cups made of biscuit. The newsvenders sold 
queer papers like Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday and Tid-Bits 
and when they spoke of “home” they meant England! 
And such an odd way of pronouncing “home”—as though 
there were at least two vowels in the middle and no h to 
speak of! 

And Miss Green, who arranged entertainments at the 
Seamen’s Institute, Miss Green who was about thirty and 
rather thin, Miss Green with whom he might quite easily 
have fallen in love, had he not already fallen in love with 
Miss Dolly Castles, the star of that quite too delicious 
Pinafore —to say nothing of Phoebe Meddar, whose 
image he kept “polishing up so faithfully”in his heart— 
Miss Green lived in what she called an “upstairs ’ouse!” 
Most houses here hadn’t any upstairs! And Miss Green 
had never seen snow! But she had been in a part of the 
north-west where it was so hot you couldn’t put your hand 
on a cat’s back—and Paul had asked if the cat burnt her 
tongue when she tried to lick herself! 

There was something quaint about it all, and something 
heart-catching. Probably it was merely the thought that 
you might have to turn your back on everything and go 
home, just when you had set foot on the edge of 
experience! 

The evening at the theatre had been dazzling and fault¬ 
less. Hazel Kirke was tame compared with Dick Dead- 
eye and Hebe and Josephine and the sisters and cousins 
and aunts in their pink dresses—no, frocks. “And I pol¬ 
ished up the handles so faithfully, that now I’m the Ruler 
of the Queen’s Navee—” That was him, Paul Minas! 
And the lilt of it! If Gritty could only have been along! 


SOLO 


139 


He pictured Gritty, with her snub nose and saucy eyes, 
singing “I’m called little Buttercup, de-ah little Butter¬ 
cup-” 

Veronique and Hamlet, alas, were being played in 
Perth. Perth was an elegant city, compared with the 
grubby seaport. But his heart was none the less in the 
grubby seaport, for it represented his first glimpse and 
taste of exoticism. Nothing in life could ever eclipse his 
first walk along the shopping streets of Freemantle, 
nothing could ever be as sweet as the first ‘lolly” he 
had put into his mouth, nothing quite so thrilling 
in its way as the first order he had ever given a waitress, 
in a funny tea-shop where there were only three 
tables! 

One of the sharpest thrills of all had come during his 
first walk through the streets of Perth. In a baker’s 
window he had seen a placard advertising a recital to be 
given by Madame Melba. For a moment the material 
world fell away, he was transported straight into a 
world of tangible dreams, and he realized that the great 
life of adventure had begun in earnest. For Melba was 
one of the immortal figures portrayed in Aunt Verona’s 
big blue volume of musical celebrities. How well he re¬ 
called the portrait—the long plaits of hair, the eyes lifted 
toward heaven, the hands clasping a prayer book. In 
the same volume were portraits of Max Alvary, and 
Frances Saville, Jean de Reszke, Paderewski, Patti, 
Rubinstein and a dozen others. He had thought of them 
as creatures who had had their being in a world quite re¬ 
mote from any be would ever be likely to know. True, 
Aunt Verona had once breathed the atmosphere of that 
faery world, but that only enhanced the glamour. It had 
never occurred to him that those creatures might still be 
alive; the mere fact that their photographs were in a book 
seemed to throw them into some dim past. And now, 
here in Perth, was an announcement that the fabulous 



140 


SOLO 


Melba was going to sing! And he, Paul Minas of Hale s 
Turning, was actually in a corner of the globe where such 

miracles came to pass 1 i , 

Unhappily, when he had examined the placard more 
closely he had found that it was many months old. It 
was a lazy baker. She had come and gone. Even^so, he 
was breathing air into which glorious notes had been 
poured—notes as much more enthralling than Miss 
Todd’s as heaven was more enthralling than earth 1 
there “would have been” a heaven! He had nearly seen 
a dream come true—had been “hot,” as they said in the 
game of “search the button.” And Dr. Wilcoye and the 
old man coolly expected him to go back to Hale s Turning 
to be educated! 

Of all the sensations that had stirred him, the most 
profound, the most haunting had been the sound of the 
chimes—in the tower of the Fremantle town hall. The 
second evening in port he had hurried through his tasks 
and come ashore alone, unwilling to have his first impres¬ 
sions clouded by the inept remarks of a companion. After 
ferreting his way through side-streets, he had walked to 
a sandy hill behind the town from which he could see the 
ocean. The hill was covered with tufts of wiry grass, 
and here and there were eucalyptus trees, their long 
smooth, bark-patched trunks showing pink and lavender 
and palest lemon in the glow of the dying day. Far away, 
on one side, was an Oval dotted with cricketers, and a 
fife and drum band was playing “Cock o’ the North.” 
The brick and stone villas, so quaint after the wooden 
houses of Nova Scotia, clustering beneath him and 
stretching along the river bank, seemed ineffably cosy. 
Each was a home, replete with mother, father and chil¬ 
dren: the three essential factors of the game called 
“House” which was a favourite with the little girls of 
Hale’s Turning. Here he was on the opposite side of 
the world, alone on a bare hill-top, with mere fancies to 


SOLO 


141 

serve him as brothers and sisters, while at his feet nestled 
the homes of aliens who, for all their odd ways, were 
quite similar to Nova Scotians. Yet on this whole con¬ 
tinent there was no creature who had heard of Paul 
Minas. Here he stood, like the son of a god on some 
sacred mount, watching Australians at their sports, phil¬ 
osophizing about them in a brand new pair of long 
trousers, infinitely well-disposed toward them, yet for all 
they knew of it he might just as well be on the top side 
of the world. If he were to go back the very next day, 
it would be to them as though he had never been here, 
yet for him the whole world would henceforth seem quite 
different than it would have seemed had he not been here. 
When the sun had sunk into the sea, he made his way 
down the hill and walked towards the centre of town 
along a residential street bordered by scorched gardens in 
which dusty red and yellow flowers struggled for exist¬ 
ence. At the juncture of two deserted streets he came to 
the town hall, and as he was crossing the triangular space 
in front of it, his thoughts in a cloud, the bells began to 
chime. 

At home there was the school bell, and every church 
had a single bell which on the Sabbath summoned the 
faithful monotonously to its doors, but until this evening 
Paul had never heard chimes. The four deep-voiced bells, 
solemnly intoning their formula of sixteen notes, en¬ 
thralled him, and he stood spellbound as a still deeper 
voice tolled the hour. But the musical formula of the 
chimes did more than enthral him: it engendered a name¬ 
less mood compounded of wistfulness, yearning, loneli¬ 
ness, disillusionment, regret, confidence, and iridescent 
hope. The chimes were beautiful but infinitely sombre; 
they were a little weary, a little sad, resigned, but at the 
same time unflinching. Above all, they were wise. Their 
message was a proverb, a simple chord which yet ex¬ 
pressed the essence of all truth. There was a hint of 


142 


SOLO 


eternity in the chimes, and a hint of fortitude. For Paul 
they were even prophetic. 

“You boy,” they seemed to say, “you will go from this 
town to’other towns, from this land to other lands, al¬ 
ways exploring, always an alien. You will seek know¬ 
ledge and happiness, but you will find them only m 
oddments, like apples fallen from a barrow; the barrow 
will always be beyond the brow of the hill. It is your 
destiny to be sad when you wish to be glad and most sad 
of all when you learn that life is only a brief solo and 
that your solo, in the ears of God, is, like a million others, 
merged into the blurred, harmonious hum of the cosmos. 
So much for vanity, boy. So much for your long 
trousers. Our chime is a marching-song and an epitaph. 
Let it for ever echo in your heart, and you will be 
neither too improvidently hopeful nor too cruelly de- 
ceived: 


La-fa-so-do, 
Do-so-la-fa; 
La-so-fa-do, 
Do-so-la-fa.” 


Paul had been unconsciously holding a bruised leaf of 
eucalyptus to his face. Its odour, bitter-sweet and 
pungent, seemed an integral part of the oracle. 

5 

Miss Green’s invitation to attend the concert at the 
Seamen’s Institute Paul regarded as a tribute to his 
personal distinction, and he made a careful toilet. On 
arriving at the hall he was discountenanced to find not 
only that the whole crew had been invited, but that one 
of them, Dismal Jimmy, was to contribute a song to the 
programme. Paul’s vanity was punctured, and as he took 
a seat beside Otto he chided himself for having been 
a prig. 


SOLO 


143 


Otto had received his discharge and was to sail next 
day as deck-hand on a German liner, the Barbarossa. 
Paul regretted the prospective loss of his burly chum and 
was envious of Otto’s opportunity to return to such a 
romantic land—though he still disapproved of Otto’s 
reason for returning. 

The hall was soon filled, for there were several ships 
in port and apart from the pubs and the beguilements of 
Perth some miles distant—rival attractions were few. 
The fact that Dismal Jimmy was on the programme while 
he, Paul Minas, was merely a member of the audience, 
offended his sense of proportion. Furthermore, his long 
musical abstention, while it had brought surcease from 
practice, had ended by inducing an acute desire to make 
music. As he sat looking up at the piano his shoulders 
and arms and finger-ends yearned. The antiquated piano 
on the ship was feeble and unresponsive. Here was a 
piano which looked as though it might wail and exult. 
Through his mind coursed grandiose passages from the 
Schumann “Carnival,” and from the querulous, clamor¬ 
ous Chopin etude in C minor which gave off flashes of 
lightning in the treble while thundering in the base. And 
no one had even asked if he could “do” anything! The 
curse of being only thirteen. 

A sailor with a rasping baritone sang about “the brave, 
the brave hussars,” and another, with erratic notions of 
pitch and tempo, sang a ballad which was largely a matter 
of “Dairy down dairy ah, dairy dairy oh!” Miss Green 
doggedly accompanied, whilst necklaces danced about her 
thin dry neck. There were two daubs of pink on her 
cheek-bones; her nose was whiter than her elbows; and 
she wore a yellow muslin dress that made her hair look 
dusty. But Miss Green was nice. In her presence one 
felt pleasantly masculine and protective, and jealous of all 
other males. And Paul had a loyal desire not to be cap¬ 
tious about her appearance or her musicianship. Perhaps 


144 


SOLO 


some day a thoroughly chivalrous first-mate would lead 
her to the altar, then her necklaces might cease rattling. 

When Dismal Jimmy’s turn came, there was an awk¬ 
ward consultation in whispers. The Cormshman had no 
music, and Miss Green couldn’t play by ear. Paul s 
pulses throbbed. He was sure Dismal Jimmy planned to 
sing “The Vicar of Bray” or “Rocked in the Cradle of 
the Deep.” Paul could improvise accompaniments, pro¬ 
vided he knew the tune. Consequently when the curate, 
who was chairman, called for a volunteer Paul timidly 
responded. Otto gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder 
and shoved him into the aisle. When Dismal Jimmy had 
settled the matter of key, Paul played a flourishing entree, 

and the song proceeded. 

At its conclusion Miss Green waylaid raul. Un her 
homely face was an expression he knew quite well: fond, 
indulgent, adoring. If, after the manner of Miss Todd, 
she had linked her arm in his and said, “You’re a wonder, 
Paul—dear,” he would not have been surprised. What 
she did say was more to the point: “After that, you can t 
get out of giving us a solo! I’ll tell Mr. Simpkins.” _ 

The next few numbers were a blur in Paul’s mind. 
He was trying to select an appropriate piece from his old 
repertoire. The “Davidsbundler” march and the “Revo¬ 
lution” etude would sound grotesque on a programme that 
included such ditties as “We all went into the shop, to 
see what we could see 1” He thought of salon pieces that 
would be sure of provoking applause. But he restlessly 
rejected them, for as the programme went on he became 
less anxious to show off than to convey to this roomful 
of seamen, stokers, engineers and stewards some superfine 
message. The simple wisdom of the bells had penetrated 
into his heart. His appetite for exotic sensations, ap¬ 
peased for the moment, had given place to a sense of 
well-being which became diffused in a new tenderness. 
Dimly, gropingly, he felt that if he could imbue his neigh- 


SOLO 


145 


hours with a similar sense of well-being, some priceless 
blessing would grow out of it. He recalled Mr. Silva’s 
old sayings, and longed to place these men under a spell 
they could never forget, to weld them together so that, 
as one, they should share the benefit of his recent medita¬ 
tions. He had it at heart to evoke in them some counter¬ 
part of the awe and humility, melancholy and exaltation, 
pity and fortitude he had felt upon hearing the symbolic 
chimes. He was still undecided when the curate an¬ 
nounced that the next “item” would be a “piano selection 
by Master Laval of the Clytemnestra 

The jolt of being thus classified brought before Paul’s 
eyes a vision of the good old Clytemnestra, trudging on, 
carrying him like the faithful white bear east of the sun 
and west of the moon. Moon! Those blue velvet nights 
when his thoughts had walked down its yellow carpet to 
the very edge of the world, when out of the silence he had 
conjured up the strains of the composition which Aunt 
Verona said was miscalled the “Moonlight Sonata.” As¬ 
suredly it was out of place in this reeking hall—well, he 
must simply make it in place! 

With a new sort of confidence but with none of the 
swagger of school-concert days, he mounted to the plat¬ 
form. In his mind he was reviewing whole pages to be 
sure he remembered the intricate passages. 

Instead of compelling his audience to warm his heart 
with their flattery, he would warm their hearts with the 
message of Beethoven, a message which he understood to¬ 
night infinitely better than in the days when he had glibly 
performed the sonata with uncalloused hands. 

These men, he felt, expected something flashy, ragtime 
for preference; “Hunky-dory or Coon, Coon, Coon, I 
wish my colour would fade!” They were still humming 
the refrain of “Old Bull and Bush.” A long dormant 
theatrical instinct seized him in its grip. For the moment 
he was on his old pedestal, his organ-bench, his sail locker, 


SOLO 


146 

his forecastle-head nook, his cloud-top—King of the 
Castle. Nothing should detract from the illusion he meant 
to create—the illusion of warm velvety blackness, tropical 
seas, a carpet of moonlight, meditations reaching out 
toward infinite knowledge and informed by whisperings 
of the voice of God. They might think him silly, but 
silly or not he would exercise his kingly prerogative. 

“Will some one please turn out the lights,” he re- 
quested. 

Mr. Simpkins raised his eyebrows; Miss Green 
fidgeted; the audience gaped. There was some fussing 
in the small room behind the platform, the curate cleared 
his throat and made faces, but Paul held his ground, and 
finally the lights went out with a resentful snap. A street 
lamp shed a bluish glow through the windows, but the 
platform was in obscurity. To dispel the awkwardness 
Paul played preparatory chords and arpeggios, and 
waited. Then with all the. will power at his command, he 
submerged himself in the mood of the sonata. 

With the opening bars a solemn elation possessed him, 
and his surroundings fell away. It was as though some 
divine soothsayer were using him to convey to mortals a 
beneficent augury. Often enough he had played this first 
movement literally. To-night he was contributing to its 
literal truth a fervid “Verily I say unto you.” For to¬ 
night he felt the music not only as sound but as the epi¬ 
tome of wisdom. 

In his subconsciousness was the image of himself, 
lulled by the sea, his soul borne like a melody over rhyth¬ 
mical waves. The theme of the movement was as noble 
as a ship; it was carried forward on waves of sound as 
unbroken as the waves of the ocean, with a momentum 
as irresistible as theirs, instinct with a like gentleness and 
sadness. 

On and on—towards what? From the utter stillness 
Paul knew that his audience were asking the question. 


SOLO 


147 


Towards what? First of all towards dawn, and as he 
broke into the tenderly playful and speculative mood of 
the second movement he was imbued with a sense of om¬ 
nipotence. For, by abandoning his soul to the task, he 
had been able to make a hundred men forget the world 
of beer and ribaldry and show them, perhaps for the 
first time in their lives, their kinship with the sublime 
“wisdom and spirit of the universe.” Otto was going 
home to learn the technique of slaughter, whilst he, Paul 
Minas, alias Laval the cabin-boy, could bewitch men into 
becoming as little children. 

The onrush of the third movement transformed the 
tranquil scene in his subconsciousness to one of elemental 
clamour and menace. As on the distant night of the 
hurricane, so now he caught himself “rooting” for the 
elements, inciting them to violence, that he might demon¬ 
strate the triumph of human resistance —his resistance, 
for throughout this final movement he became identified 
with the melody. This was the very theme of his life, 
and he made it exultantly sing, all the while assaulting it 
with the full fury of the world’s opposition. He would 
not deceive himself by minimizing the strength of his 
assailants. Hostile voices should scream, roar, rumble, 
plead, wail and sigh as they had done on the memorable 
afternoon when Aunt Verona had broken silence. Her 
inspired domination of the piano was his precedent for 
to-night’s performance. Above the inimical chorus he 
sounded forth the dauntless theme—his theme. At all 
costs he must keep it pure, soaring, triumphant. His fear 
of making slips with work-coarsened fingers vanished 
like a mist in the sun. The music was playing itself. 
So should his very life. 

If Aunt Verona could only hear—oh, to be able to 
explain to Aunt Verona that he was vindicating their 
“method,” that he was proving to hundreds of men, to 
the whole crude and hapless world, that truth and love 


148 


SOLO 


were indestructible, that hate and violence, for all their 
sardonic power, were futile! Aunt Verona had known. 
In the village, fools had whispered that she was mad, and 
she had disdained to explain. But to him she had ex¬ 
plained—not in words, but in terms as subtle as those in 
which he was now exhorting a chance congregation. 
Aunt Verona had known; she had lived long enough to 
give him a hint; and now he was beginning to know. 
And he would go on learning, and some day the winds 
of knowledge would sweep him to the very shores of 
heaven. Meanwhile he was on the right course; he was 
catching glimpses of his soul, illuminating glimpses. 

A long pause for the two deep octaves. Then a short 
recapitulation of the theme and a swift, exultant flourish, 
by way of proclaiming his final vindication. 

His arms dropped, his nerves and muscles relaxed, and 
a great weariness came over him. He knew he had suc¬ 
ceeded, but he no longer cared. He even forgot what he 
had been doing, and was surprised when the lights went 
up. He was mechanically bowing before a blur of heads. 
Thick-skinned hands and tough sea-lungs were acclaim¬ 
ing him. If he had begun by chastening his audience into 
a breathless entity, he had ended by inciting it to riotous 
approbation. Infinitely more decorous applause in the 
town hall of Hale’s Turning had intoxicated him, but 
this noisy demonstration merely assailed his ears. What 
was hand-applause after that long pregnant silence! 
Even the pride in Otto’s face moved him only to a mo¬ 
mentary glow of pleasure. With a pang he realized that 
he had outgrown Otto and the Clytemriestra, as he had 
outgrown Hale’s Turning. 

For the sake of peace he played additional solos, then 
the concert was at an end, and he knew that Miss Green 
was waiting to invite him to have coffee and cake in 
the small inner room. At any other time he would have 
accepted gladly, but now he was too deeply buried in 


SOLO 


149 


himself to be reached by promiscuous amenities. Some¬ 
thing had been conceived in his soul, and he wished the 
process of gestation to go on unhindered. For all that 
he had spent himself without stint, he felt there was no 
one among his hearers who could have understood what 
it meant to him. 

He found his way out unnoticed, and walked slowly 
towards the town by a roundabout route. The air was 
warm, soft and strong. The sky was alive with stars. 
Dusty gardens gave forth faint aromatic odours. Far 
off, the ocean sighed and licked the beach. Once a group 
of tipsy loiterers bawled impotently into the welkin. As 
he was making his way to the high street, the bells of the 
town hall, a few squares farther on, broke into their 
chime: fuller and deeper for the darkness and hush of 
night. His emotions raced to his throat and eyes fighting 
for an outlet, then surged back, leaving him in a warm 
flood. With the bells one wasn’t alone; with the memory 
of their deep tones one could never be alone. La-fa-so-do 
—sixteen notes, slow, even, majestic. A magic formula. 
And each note went singing forth in a circle of sound 
which infinitely widened, like the circles in a pool. The 
circles would follow him to the very ends of the earth, 
always. God was subtle. 

To-night their message was less grim, more comfort¬ 
ing. “Courage, mon petit!” Aunt Verona’s words! 
“Have faith in yourself, and nothing on earth can pre¬ 
vail against you.” Beethoven had known it. The fifth 
bell tolled the hour of eleven. # 

He wandered on till he came to a bridge over the rail¬ 
way tracks. The sound of echoing footsteps drew him 
from his abstraction and he walked more quickly. He 
had by no means outgrown his distrust for shadows, and 
was consumed with a desire to turn and see who was 
following. To do so would be a sure proof of timidity, 
yet in the end he couldn’t resist. 


SOLO 


150 

He recognized the advancing figure as that of an of¬ 
ficer who had been present at the concert. He was reas¬ 
sured, but surprised. Why should the officer have left 
his companions. Besides, there was a much shorter route 
to the end of the quay where the big liners moored. 

As the stranger was overtaking him, Paul turned again 
and met a propitiatory smile. “Excuse me,” began the 
newcomer with a German accent, I tried to catch you 
and thank you for your playing.” 

Paul smiled diffidently. “Dcmke sehr.” 

The stranger puffed out his cheeks, opened wide his 
little eyes, and raised his arms in kindly protest against 
the boy’s modesty. “Aber, es war schon, wunderbar — 
fabelhaft!” 

Paul was flattered in spite of himself. “I felt like 
playing,” he deprecated. “That makes all the difference. 
I couldn’t do it again, as well!” 

The big officer, chuckling, linked his arm in Paul’s and 
fell into step with him. The gesture was instinctive and 
Paul didn’t in the least resent it, though usually he shrank 
from the contact of any but his most privileged friends. 
One afternoon in the paint locker Shorty had touched him 
and looked at him in a strange manner, and Paul had 
wriggled quickly away. In a flash his knowledge of the 
world had taken a long leap forward and endowed him 
with self-protective caution. 

Along deserted ways they walked, speaking alternately 
English and German. The officer was curious, and asked 
paternal questions. He was thirty-five or forty years old, 
stout, blond, sunburnt to the colour of a saddle. 

Fact by fact Paul related his history. Never had he 
been called on to give a chronological account of himself, 
and the necessity of reducing his past to a well-propor¬ 
tioned narrative pleasantly exercised his ingenuity, and 
also helped him towards an understanding of himself. 
Moreover, the stranger not only understood the motives 


SOLO 


1 5i 

which had prompted his rebellious acts, but seemed to 
accept them as inevitable and normal. Paul felt all the 
freer to talk, inasmuch as his companion, in a few hours, 
would be on the high seas, bound for Germany, in the 
ship that was to carry Otto home. He took the occasion 
to put in a word for Otto, asked his new friend to be 
kind to his old one. 

When they reached the Clytemnestra’s berth, it was 
Paul who suggested that they should sit on a stack of 
lumber and prolong the interview. He talked of Aunt 
Verona, of the Bechstein piano, of the Sundays in Hale’s 
Turning. He talked of his escape from school and his 
sea experiences, of his impressions of the new country, of 
its mysterious smells and sounds and sights, of his long¬ 
ing to smell all the exotic odours in the world, hear and 
see all the marvels, and know everything! He told of 
his conversations with the captain, of the letter from Dr. 
Wilcove, of his mood at the concert, his sudden feeling 
that the lights must be turned out, his yearning to convey 
some fine message to the assembly, his spiritual exalta¬ 
tion whilst playing, and his plunge into a bitter void when 
he had risen from the piano. 

He had seen his mates straggling back to the ship. 
The cabin and forecastle lights had long been extin¬ 
guished, and only the figure of the night watchman was 
moving. Faintly, from the direction of the town, came 
the ghostly sound of the chimes and the stroke of two. 
He couldn’t tell his companion about the bells—their 
message was incommunicable. He shivered. He had 
got to the very end. 

“And when do you go back to Canada? 

The question gave Paul a shock. It was so specific. 
His world stood still, as it had done one night on Mrs. 
Kestrell’s back stairs. Again there came a blinding flash 
to point out his course. And in the blackness which en¬ 
sued, as the world again became grey and cold and palpa- 


152 


SOLO 


ble, his gaze resting on the sharp crease of his long 
trousers, he announced in deliberate, almost scared tones: 

‘Tm not going back, ever. ,, 

6 

Without warning, a few days later, Captain Caxton 
presented Paul with a steamship ticket, a book of travel¬ 
ler’s cheques, and a certificate of honourable discharge 
made out in his real name. Taken aback by the com¬ 
pleteness of these arrangements, Paul feigned acquies¬ 
cence, but before embarking on the coastal steamer he 
had the foresight to bribe one of his casual acquaintances 
—an employe in a bookshop—to send a forged telegram 
timed to reach him on his arrival in Sydney. With this 
telegram he would counter any officiousness on the part 
of well-meaning gentlemen who had been invited to see 
him safely on his homeward way. 

He had not the faintest intention of continuing on the 
prescribed route to Vancouver and thence overland to 
Halifax, but of his intentions, which were vague, he said 
nothing to the captain, who came to see him off. Paul, 
while grateful to the captain for his goodwill, was hurt 
at not having been consulted. That, he felt, absolved 
him of all obligation to confide his plans. The old man 
had put money—Paul’s own, as it now appeared—into 
his hands and shipped him off, had done his duty, accord¬ 
ing to his lights—for which he would find his reward in 
heaven! Henceforth Paul was answerable only to him¬ 
self, and as he stood on the towering promenade deck of 
the Kalgoorlie looking over the roofs of warehouses and 
down at the figures on the quay—the “sisters and cousins 
and aunts” of his fellow-passengers—the boy smiled with 
a timorous exultation at the enormity of his plot. The 
great adventure was beginning with a vengeance. 

The steamer drew slowly away from the dock and for 
a few moments rested in mid-stream. As the last hawser 


SOLO 


153 


was heaved aboard, the steam-winches ceased clanking 
and a silence ensued, broken only by farewell “coo-ees.” 
Then, faint but clear, over the patchwork of hot tiles, 
came the sound of bells. Paul’s eyes sought out the 
tower of the town hall and a mist blurred his vision. 
The chimes—the magic formula. It was a final message 
in a code unknown to the old man and all the others, a 
message for him alone, a message of warning and com¬ 
fort. “Have faith in yourself.” Aunt Verona’s words: 
“Du courage, mon petit—ga ira!” Yes, but it was going 
to be a lonely progress— bitterlich! For all their wisdom 
and fortitude, the bells were sad. 

Poor red, sandy hot, bare little town! Up the river, 
beyond the bridge, he could descry the dingy “upstairs 
house” in which Miss Green lived. It was all but ob¬ 
scured by the branches of a fig tree. On the hill behind 
the town, near a clump of jarrahs, he made out the spot 
where he had stood on his first evening ashore—godlike 
on a sacred mount. He conjured up the smell of eucalyp¬ 
tus, and the shrill strains of “Cock o’ the North.” 

The prosperous steamship was gliding towards the 
breakwater that extended beyond the mouth of the river. 
Somewhere a signal was clanging. Paul pictured the 
brass indicators. “And I polished up the handles so 
faithfully!” That unforgettable night at the theatre! 
Some day, somewhere, he would go to vast theatres, hear 
famous orchestras and operas: Faust, Carmen, Parsifal! 

Beyond the steamers, far away at the end of the quay, 
were the tall masts and disordered yards of the Clytem- 
nestra. Lightened of her burden, she stood high, her 
sides garishly daubed with vermilion. No more seances 
in the old sail locker, with its smell of manilla. No more 
smuggled tins of cherries and peaches; no more chocolate- 
coated biscuits; no more yarns in the galley and carpenter- 
shop. They had all seemed sorry when he said good-bye, 
and sheepishly affectionate. Strange how one could grow 


154 


SOLO 


to love a ship quite as though it were a person, yet also a 
home. Good old Clytemnestra! This great steamship 
was tearing him away from something he cherished more 
than he had known. He thought of a sentence he had 
read in a wise French book: “Life is a series of partial 
deaths.” But, as he mourned the death of the precocious 
cabin-boy, he reflected that life was, by the same token, a 
series of creations. “Laval est mort,” he philosophized. 
“Vive Minas!” The mantle of the cabin-boy, complete 
with honourable discharge, had descended upon Master 
Paul Minas, first-class passenger. Gentleman Jim, to be 
sure. Shorty’s taunts were only the vesture of envy. 
Poor Shorty didn’t suspect the self-belittling effect of 
envy, and would go on taunting people till he had shrunk 
into nothing. Above all else, Paul wished to avoid such 
a fate. Mark Laval had taught him a lifelong lesson by 
showing up his narrow-mindedness. He had a morbid 
fear of setting out on any path that seemed easy. He 
even distrusted the magical book of cheques which he was 
carrying under his belt. By merely signing his name 
twenty times he could have as much money as Mr. Silva 
had paid for his little house in Hale’s Turning, and that 
didn’t seem right. He was sure Mr. Silva’s personal 
worth had something to do with the fact that Mr. Silva 
had had to toil for his possessions. 

Despite these moralistic reflections, Paul could not be 
indifferent to the luck that was making it possible for him 
to see cities bigger than Halifax: Adelaide, named after 
a queen; Melbourne, where Melba was born; Sydney, 
whose harbour, according to Miss Hornby, was one of the 
most beautiful in the world, and, according to Miss 
Green, full of sharks which gobbled up boys and girls 
who fell off ferry-boats. 

And at Sydney? Well, anything rather than go aboard 
the liner waiting to take him to Vancouver. He would 
have to write a letter to Dr. Wilcove, exonerating the 


SOLO 


155 


old man. And he would tell Dr. Wilcove not to hold him¬ 
self responsible for anything, if it was such a bother. 
After all, the trustees couldn’t keep the moss from grow¬ 
ing over the shipyard at Hale’s Turning; besides, he 
didn’t want it. 

There was the island where the Orizaba had sunk. 
Deep under the green water were skeletons shut up in 
cabins and engine-rooms. An enormous propeller lay 
abandoned on the bronze rocks, and the sun beat scorch- 
ingly down. 

A gong sounded and passengers precipitated themselves 
below deck. Paul was filled with curiosity as to the food. 
With an overwhelming shyness he made his way toward 
the dining-saloon. A steward in a white jacket would 
serve him! 


" y / W ■ : - % 

% 


















PART III 


i57 



VI 


I 

FROM ship to ship, from ocean to ocean, from land to 
land, waiting for ballast, tides, charters, and crews, 
wandering through jungles, loafing in water-side bars, 
rubbing shoulders with beach-combers, drinking tea with 
muslin-frocked ladies, inspecting temples and volcanoes, 
museums and graveyards, ambling through bazaars, rid¬ 
ing donkeys and elephants, tossing pennies to naked 
beggar-boys from fragile jinrickshas, patronizingly 
interested in the monuments of bygone dynasties, abnor¬ 
mally condescending to lemon-squashes and mangoes, ex¬ 
ploring, sampling, summing up—the cheek of it all! 

For five years Paul had watched the world expand. 
New civilizations revealed themselves; swarms of aliens 
paraded for him, while he stored his mind with impres¬ 
sions. Then, days or weeks later, as his ship headed for 
the sea, the civilization last under inspection would 
dwindle into a grey shore-line, and only his own mind be 
left to bear witness that it even existed. The more he 
saw of the globe, the more he felt its unreality and his 
own incontrovertible existence in time and space. The 
one stable phenomenon in the universe was his ego, and 
that had merely the stability of a moon-drawn, wind- 
agitated ocean. 

In the long periods of isolation he had read hundreds 
of books and spent hours in meditation. Year by year, 
he saw himself changing from a boy whom he intimately 
i59 


i6o 


SOLO 


knew into a stalwart man whom he was at a loss to 
understand. When the daily routine was accomplished, 
when he sat apart or walked in unexplored directions, he 
was conscious of crossing a threshold that no one but 
himself ever crossed, and entering into the chambers of 
his own identity. Having done this he would sigh, but 
not merely in relief at having eluded the world; the sigh 
breathed a hint of despair, for, as the shelves of his mind 
grew heavy with impressions he was aghast at the chaos. 

Each book, each acquaintance, each glimpse of the 
world added its quota to the store-house; hence each in¬ 
trospective interval had to be devoted to the task of 
overhauling and re-sorting. He could find no compre¬ 
hensive system in accordance with which to group his 
opinions, tastes, and bundles of information, for, no 
matter how carefully he tucked and patted and squeezed, 
there were stray ends and overlappings and bulges, the 
interior was colourful beyond description, but far from 
shipshape. It was a library without a catalogue. 

Blindly he attributed the confusion to lack of schooling, 
and in weak moments rued lost opportunities. Then, in 
some casual encounter ashore, he would find himself able 
to correct school or even university-taught men who had 
little but skeletonic theories with which to match his full- 
blooded facts. In the hope of reducing the facts to tabu¬ 
lation he would plunge again into text-books. These had 
their uses, but gave him no clue to the mental and emo¬ 
tional transformation going on within him. 

Unhappily there was no one of his own age with whom 
he could talk upon any but the most elementary topics. 
When books failed, he could only resort to physical di¬ 
versions, and at sea these were limited in kind. There 
had been a few friends, notably an apprentice from an 
English barque whom he had met in Hong Kong, and a 
young officer on a French steamer he had joined at 
Saigon. Their companionship had been precious; but he 


SOLO 


161 


seemed fated to outgrow his friends, and in retrospect 
saw that what he had taken for common ground was in 
reality no more than his friends’ willingness to humour 
his excesses of imagination and idealism. In a sense this 
enhanced their worth, but it also added a drop of sadness 
to his cup, for he longed, at this period, to be interpreted 
rather than tolerated. 

He was under no delusion that his mind was too great 
a thing to be understood; simply, it was too multifarious, 
too specialized. Most men presented a traceable pattern 
whereas he saw himself as a patchwork that defied analy¬ 
sis. Yet he felt there must be some principle of homoge¬ 
neity running through it, some stevedoring technique at 
work in the loading of his inner chambers. In books he 
was continually reading of youths who found it difficult 
to weather the period of “storm and stress” but who 
came through all right. He supposed, he earnestly hoped, 
he was in their case. 

2 

In Sydney Paul had shipped on a Blue Funnel boat 
bound for Chinese and Japanese ports. At Nagasaki he 
had been left in the hospital with an attack of fever. 
During convalescence a pretty Englishwoman, the wife 
of an exporter, had brought him books and fruit, and, 
when he was well, invited him to her house, where he 
spent blissful days playing on a grand piano. Then the 
lady’s husband rather determinedly found him a berth on 
a trans-Pacific passenger ship. Tickled at having aroused 
the jealousy of a middle-aged man, Paul eluded his bene¬ 
factor and shipped on a dirty tramp trading with the 
Malay States, whence he wrote a most sentimental twenty- 
page letter to the pretty Englishwoman. 

Thereafter he wandered from ship to ship, loathing his 
squalid surroundings, waging campaigns against animal- 
culse—what quantities of Keating’s powder!—and ward- 


SOLO 


162 

ing off the coarse encroachments of his mates, thirsting 
for new experiences, ever erecting new air castles upon the 
ruins of the old. Ordinary seaman, able seaman, steward, 
bugle boy, quartermaster, assistant purser, boatswain: 
he had acted in these and other capacities, and at the end 
of each voyage converted his pay-day into English gold 
and added his savings to the fund with which he had set 
out from Fremantle. The secreting and safeguarding of 
this hoard had been a precarious business. More than 
once he had done battle for it. But association with 
ruffians had taught him arts of self-protection. 

For three or four years he roved the Southern Seas in 
steamers of varying nationality, touching at ports in 
Africa, India, South America. In none of his ships did 
he find the freedom, comfort and kindliness that had pre¬ 
vailed on the Clytemnestra. None of his shipmates 
spoiled him as Captain Caxton and Otto and the Danish 
carpenter had done. Kicks replaced friendly pats, jibes 
were more common than endearments. The clean smell 
of tar and white sheen of canvas were exchanged for 
oily cotton-waste and showers of soot from smutty fun¬ 
nels. Everything was ugly, cramped and prosaic. Aboard 
the Clytemnestra one had made the world to suit oneself; 
wars might rage throughout Europe and Asia and no¬ 
body be the wiser. On wireless ships distracting rumours 
came to the ears. In retrospection his first voyage seemed 
like a story he might have read in Chums . 

Often, when carrying out the orders of some weedy 
fourth officer, Paul had mutinous fits that got him into 
trouble. After conflicts of this kind he would stare into 
the sea and curse the folly that had taken him from 
home. He pictured radiant careers he had forfeited, then 
reminded himself that nothing rooted in Hale’s Turning 
could ever be radiant. True, in Hale’s Turning, for all 
its provincialism, he might have had the solace of music; 
and the deprivation of music had done more than any- 


SOLO 


163 

thing to feed his discontent. Month by month he kept 
promising himself a vacation which he would devote with 
all his heart and soul to reparation. In spare mo¬ 
ments he exercised his hands—hands grown out of 
recognition—and whenever he went ashore he sought 
out the local “Bethel” in order to test his fingers and 
memory on the piano. But the piano was usually be¬ 
yond hope, likewise his performance. 

The moods of depression never endured, and he ended 
by resolving to see the whole squalid job through, com¬ 
plete his collection of discharge certificates, and then, 
when the right day came, go up for his Master’s papers. 
With this objective in view he was planning to join a 
British tramp in Melbourne when a French skipper of¬ 
fered him a post as second mate on a four-masted barque 
bound for California. The lure of sails and the fun of 
talking French decided him, and he signed the articles of 
the General Fronchard at the office of the French consul. 

On this ship there was red wine to drink, and a good 
cook. The galley smelt of olive oil, and Paul idly won¬ 
dered whether national characteristics had anything to do 
with diet. The crew were lazy, but competent and jolly. 
There were cats and dogs to make friends with, and the 
homeliness he had missed on steam-driven ships. The 
captain was an indifferent navigator and trusted his sub¬ 
ordinates to keep the vessel afloat whilst he played the 
gramophone and waltzed with a lady he called his wife. 
Occasionally the lady danced with Paul, and one hot night, 
somewhere in the latitude of New Caledonia, she stole 
out on deck during the second watch. “On etouffe la - 
bas she said, then, glancing over her shoulder in the 
direction of the quarters set apart for the captain, added, 
“II est saoul ce soir.” 

She talked of the Southern Cross and admired Paul’s 
knowledge of astronomy. How, par exemple, could he 
tell the difference between Venus and Jupiter? It wasn’t 


164 


SOLO 


as if there were some sign to indicate their sex. Now, 
if God had made one green and the other red, like star- 
board and port! She lurched slightly and Paul took her 
arm. She spoke of his strength, of his voice. He was, 
she affirmed, with a little emphasizing gesture of her head, 
“extraordinarily old for his age.” Why didn’t he let his 
moustache grow? It would be so mignonne. She liked 
to see him smile. She was going to give him a nickname: 
“le sonrire.” 

A few minutes later she was in Paul’s arms, where she 
had fully planned to be. In the darkness he was laugh¬ 
ing cynically to himself, for she had imagined she was 
the first! 

There followed indolent days during which Paul re¬ 
captured some of the romance that had tinged the long- 
outgrown moods of the Clytemnestra. Apart from 
books, there were few mental events to break the pleasant 
monotony. Madame’s books were thin, and rather 
warm, fare; tales by Gyp, Pierre Weber, Willy and 
Colette. She came from Port Said, and the fact that 
she adored that pestilential haunt was sufficient commen¬ 
tary on her calibre. 

Paul sat placidly among the objects in his mental 
stores, indifferent for once to the lack of order. It suf¬ 
ficed that a glint of colour here or a sinuous outline there 
beguiled his attention, while the external world slumbered 
on. Again the sails collapsed heavily against steel rig¬ 
ging 1 , then swelled towards the blue like a small boy puffing 
out his cheeks. The sheets snapped taut or slackened 
with the clink of iron blocks, and Paul gave idle in¬ 
structions in a newly perfected jargon to Italianate 
French sailors who made witty, if indecorous, conversa¬ 
tion over their half-spliced manilla and their tubs of 
caustic soda. 

Then after weeks of doldrums there rose up out of 
a lapis lazuli sea a quaint little island five or six hundred 


SOLO 


165 

miles from the nearest Fiji group—a coral affair that 
reminded the young second of a hat, with palm trees for 
feathers; an exotic dot on the ocean. Over it hovered 
birds, and he heard Madame from the break of the 
poop, shrilly wondering how they had ever got there. 
She passed down a telescope to him. Under stilted, 
coco-nut-thatched dwellings lounged a dozen natives. 
They tried to launch a boat, but the breeze was fresh and 
the surf too heavy—surf which burst and sent licking 
pools of translucent emerald over a mile of deep pink 
seaweed. 

To test the chronometers, the captain sailed as close 
as he dared, and, without warning, Paul yearned, as he 
had never yearned in his life, to be set ashore, that he 
might for ever remain on this spot of land “in which it 
seemed always afternoon.” 

“Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar. 

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.” 

Most weary of all seemed the effort to live, the effort to 
project oneself into a troublesome future, the effort to 
go on exploring, the effort of knowing, of making deci¬ 
sions, of growing up. Once again his world stood still, 
and for an eternity he gazed on this little gem of crea¬ 
tion. There one might retire, as into some cosy tomb, 
and the remainder of one’s allotted span would be a 
siesta. 

But the captain ordered him to swerve off towards a 
thousand miles of blankness, and as the wheel spun to 
the command of “La barre dessous, toute!” he dutifully 
wore ship, in the grip of a fearful nostalgia. To an old 
sail-maker he confided his mood, only to be argued down 
by rampant tales of the “Barbary Coast” in San Fran¬ 
cisco—tales which filled him with laughing disgust and 
threw him back more passionately than ever on his hope¬ 
less longings. 


166 


SOLO 


He confided in Madame, who was lolling in a deck¬ 
chair. On her lap was a guide-book, in which she had 
been gleaning facts about the island. Indulgently she 
listened, smiled archly when Paul—with belated, cynical 
gallantry—included her in his scheme of exile, then in¬ 
formed him that his island was infested with snakes. 

In despair at the incomprehension of everybody, nerve¬ 
less and dispirited, he went below. That poor little 
island, so low that an hour’s smart sailing had sunk its 
highest tree-top below the horizon! And the sandpiper 
that had been blown off-shore to die of fright on a 
foreign, heaving deck! 

That night he came to a decision. The life of the sea 
was not to be his life. His destiny lay ashore—on some 
quiet acre remote from the teeming life of the universe. 
The diminutive island had marked the beginning of a 
new variation of the endless theme. 

3 

After unloading at the mouth of the Sacramento River, 
Paul’s ship was towed into San Francisco bay and thence 
up the coast to the port of Eureka, where she was to 
take on a cargo of redwood. Paul had decided to return 
in her to Toulon, whence he would make his way into 
Germany and recast his life in a more fitting mould. The 
prospect of this adventure reawakened a dozen enthu¬ 
siasms, and stilled the unrest that had been growing for 
two or three years. His imagination leaped ahead and 
pictured him at some vast organ. Music might bring 
into his life the missing elements of direction and mean¬ 
ing. 

His picture was clouded by an uneasy wonder: had the 
interval of silence and growth rendered him incapable of 
resuming musical studies where he had left off ? It 
seemed half a lifetime since he had played Beethoven in 


SOLO 


167 


the bare hall at Fremantle, and a century since he had 
played voluntaries in the Baptist church at Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing. Was it possible that he, weather-beaten young giant, 
could ever have been that rather girlish lad who had 
reached so cock-surely down to built-up-pedals, over- 
weeningly satisfied with being able to play “Praise God” 
by heart? He laughed, with a trace of embarrassment 
and of wistfulness, at the thought, and sang out an order 
concerning a refractory filin. Just as he had once been 
an organist up to the hilt, he was now up to the hilt at 
being a sailor—a sailor, so to speak, in French. 

In the thoroughness of his adaptation he had even 
seemed to take on the appearance, as well as the character, 
of his present role; for with his brown throat and arms 
he might have passed for a Marseillais. His accent, 
owing to daily contact with the Southerners, was reminis¬ 
cent of the Midi. Only the fineness of his skin under its 
tan, the precious contours of cheek and lips, the elegance 
of waist and hip, and a literary turn of phrase, set him 
apart. 

And having exhausted the possibilities of his present 
role, he characteristically projected himself into the next: 
the role of musical disciple —ces soirees de Munich et de 
Vienne. He rehearsed it in warm June afternoons as 
he kept his men employed on deck, whilst the enormous 
saws of the mill screamed and purred their way through 
twenty-foot logs. In the evening twilight he wandered 
alone through the woods skirting the village of Samoa, 
picking berries in the bushes, or mowing off the heads 
of yellow poppies with a switch. Often he crossed the 
low strip which separated the bay from the sea, and 
seated on a dune amid tufts of reed, let his thoughts 
roam down the track of the moon, as they had done a 
thousand times in a thousand corners of the world. 

Eureka, the up-to-date little city across the harbour, 
had no attraction for him. He had explored its park, 


168 


SOLO 


spent an hour in its library, bought some necessities m 
its shops, walked in First, Second and Thir treets, 
likewise in A, B and C, and in its leading theatre wit¬ 
nessed an appalling melodrama called The Algerian 
Princess. His mates had found their way by instinct 
to a street whose houses flaunted red lights at their 

portals. 1 - 

On the Fourteenth of July, the captain declared a 
fete in honour of the taking of the Bastille. Paul obtained 
extra leave and boarded a jaunty little train which ran 
through forests of gigantic redwoods carpeted with fern, 
past gorges and gulches, to the village of Trinidad, 
perched on a precipice and serving as a centre of the 
logging industry. There he hired a buggy and drove 
along a superb coast, in the direction of Crescent City, 
over a narrow road which in places was merely a ledge 
on the cliffs. Above him stretched walls of rock; below, 
steep grassv slopes, riotous with bushes of mountain 
laurel, while far beneath lay the green sea, streaked blue 
in a manner that recalled the “blueing” he had once em¬ 
ployed to “whiten” his duck jackets. 

In the early afternoon he arrived at a cove about which 
clustered a few farms. Roses and geraniums spilt over 
unpainted fences. Before the prettiest cottage he stopped 
and called out to a girl who was feeding chickens. She 
shaded her eyes with one hand, held up her apron wit 
the other, and advanced wonderingly. She was uncouth 
but comely, with silky yellow hair, strong teeth and 
sculpturesque limbs. Her figure was revealed by a tight 
blue cotton blouse; and stout, iron-toed boots could not 
entirely disguise the neatness of her feet. 

“Is there any place near here where I might get some¬ 
thing to eat?” Paul inquired. 

There was not. “At least no regular place like, the 

girl amended. , , 1 

“What would you be wanting?” she asked, at a los 


SOLO 


169 

to understand the requirements, much less the motives, 
of outlandish venturers into these unfrequented regions. 

Paul laughed. “Well, when you haven’t had anything 
to eat for hours and hours, it doesn’t much matter what, 
does it? I half hoped I’d find some sort of inn.” 

“Inn?” she echoed, as though she found the word 
“affected.” Perhaps it struck her as biblical, Paul re¬ 
flected, for she must have heard the famous sentence, 
“There was no room for them in the inn.” He remem¬ 
bered now that the word was not current in North 
America; his own vocabulary comprised the currency of 
twenty countries. 

In the end she invited him to take pot-luck with her. 
The men-folk were in the fields. “There ain’t much,” 
she concluded, “but you’re right welcome.” 

Paul thanked her and got out of the carriage. 

“Not much used to horses, are you?” she commented, 
as he looked doubtfully from the reins to the fence. 

“No. My first impulse was to anchor the beast, but 
I suppose the thing to do is moor him with this bit of 
line.” 

Blushing and giggling, the girl came through the gate 
to take over the hitching operation, and Paul thoroughly 
enjoyed his sense of dependence. 

“Come in,” she commanded, in a tone which added, 
“Mere man that you are.” 

“If you want to wash, there’s a pump round at the 
back, with a basin and soap.” 

On entering the kitchen a few minutes later he was 
greeted by the odour of frying meat. “Fee-fo-fi-fum! 
he exclaimed. 

“It’s a bear steak,” she informed him. “But you’re 
not to tell anybody. Bear’s out of season. Pa killed him 
for stealing our honey.” 

She ran into the garden and came back with a handful 
of roses, which she arranged, diffidently, in a heavy 


17 ° 


SOLO 


white pitcher. Paul crossed the room to smell them, 
and she returned to the stove. 

Something in the form and colour of the flowers, 
something in the smooth yellow sheen of her hair, had 
awakened an old memory. The fragrance of the flowers 
identified it. He was a boy again, poaching on the Ash- 
mill grounds, with the image of a little fair-haired girl 
in his mind. The darkness of the night, the air of 
excitement, mystery, danger and love-sickness came back 
to him. What odd trifles one remembered* 

“These are tea-roses, aren’t they?” he asked. 

“No! Marshal Neys. I grew ’em from a slip a lady 
gave me in Areata.” 

“Oh, really!” Noting that the girl wished not to be 
thought provincial, he conceded that Areata was a charm¬ 
ing town. 

She turned over the sizzling steak. “I take butter 
down there every week. I dessay you think Arcata’s 
little,” she said half defiantly. “I dessay you’ve seen a 
mort of big cities.” 

“A good few,” he admitted. She gave him a glance 
which was meant to be disapproving—to cover all con¬ 
tingencies—then smiled in spite of herself, and brought 
the frying-pan across the room, transferring its contents 
to his plate. 

“It’s all there is—except berries and cream, and bread 
and butter and cheese and milk and honey.” 

“It’s nectar and ambrosia,” he protested. “Though 
perhaps you don’t know what they are.” 

“We don’t have much time for schooling out here,” 
she retorted. She seated herself on a window-sill, folded 
her arms, and turned her eyes from his face, to the 
golden-green fields. 

The food, the shady room, the glimpse of sun-bathed 
flowers out of doors, the distant hum of bees, the girl’s 
fresh colouring and clean apron, the sound of her voice, 


SOLO 


171 


the shrewdness of her instinct and naivete of her opinions, 
all conspired to charm Paul. He sat back in his chair 
and smoked, utterly free from care. 

Through talking about school they reached the subject 
of music. 

“Do you play?” asked Paul. 

She nodded her head. 

“Have you a piano?” 

“Only an organ.” 

He rose. “Then come in the other room and play 
for me.” 

She required coaxing, but ended by sitting on a horse¬ 
hair stool and pumping out a monotonous version of a 
waltz called “Myosotis.” Every now and then she re¬ 
membered to change the bass. Paul concentrated his 
attention on the line which undulated from the nape of 
her neck to her round elbow, then thanked her and asked 
permission to play. 

She relinquished the stool, and in a few moments he 
had forgotten his surroundings, as he strayed from one 
composition to another, improvising where memory 
failed, adjusting his performance to the crying limitations 
of the instrument. 

The smell of roses came in through an open window. 
In a corner of a mirror on which daisies had been painted 
and half washed off he could see a glint of golden hair. 
Before he realized it, he was in the midst of a Bach 
prelude—in church, playing with an exalted faith in the 
music, and Phoebe Meddar was his audience. Wistfully 
he recalled his old conception of music as a universal 
language that should enlighten and unify the world. 
What a disparate thing the world had become since those 
naive days! Yet there was a unity; his present mood 
and setting were strangely reminiscent of others. Out 
of a long submerged set of associations came the memory 
of afternoons when he had posed as a grown-up virtuoso 


172 


SOLO 


performing for the edification of Mademoiselle Meddar. 
He was now grown-up, but the virtuosity, alas, was miss¬ 
ing, and for audience he had a farm-girl who fidgeted 
with impatience—all of which was about as near the 
mark as anything one could hope to realize. 

When finally, with a deep sigh, he turned from the 
organ, it was to see an astonished pair of men staring at 
him through the window. The setting sun gave a halo 
to their silhouettes, which were set off by a gay garden 
hedged with sun-flowers. Far in the background was a 
luminous sea. The stupid rusticity of the men projected 
against the unparalleled splendour of nature made Paul 
burst out laughing. The girl, from the doorway, echoed 
his laugh, believing it to be merely his reaction to the 
wonderment manifested in the faces of her father and 
brother—a reaction she could share. She explained as 
they entered the house, and the elder man, somewhat dis¬ 
trustfully, pronounced a hospitable formula, whilst the 
brother gaped. 

Paul spoke of returning, but was told that he could not 
reach Trinidad until a late hour, and it was more than 
foolhardy to drive over the ledges at night. In the end 
he accepted their offer to put him up, and went to super¬ 
intend the stabling of his horse. 

After supper he invited the girl to accompany him on 
a walk toward the cove, where a lagoon was separated 
from the sea by a narrow strip of sand formerly used 
by stage-coaches, but abandoned since a storm, many 
years since, when the surf had pounded away the road 
and engulfed a party of gold prospectors. 

They sat on a high knoll whilst shadows crept along 
the coast and a faint breeze ushered in the night. . Paul, 
strangely tranquil, yet with senses alert, was living in 
the past. In all his wandering he had come across 
nothing quite so familiarly homely as this little Pacific 
coast farm. It was exotic, yet it brought back long- 


SOLO 


173 

forgotten scenes in Nova Scotia. Another decision was 
taken: he must one day revisit Hale’s Turning. 

The girl seemed to be fascinated by his abstracted air, 
all the while resenting it. She repeatedly tried to draw 
his attention towards herself, and it repeatedly strayed. 
Mechanically, yet with a definitely tender instinct, he had 
placed his arm about her waist. She had at once pushed 
it away, but seemed complacently to expect his insistence, 
and when his arm was at last installed, a similar game 
of protest and acquiescence was gone through apropos 
of his kisses. In the end they returned silently, hand 
in hand, arms swinging. Just before reaching the gate, 
the girl stopped, peered up at him and waited. He took 
her in his arms, whilst she pretended to struggle. She 
broke away, ran a few steps, then stood facing him, her 
cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. In a flash she 
was back again, hugging him and kissing his neck— 
then like a frightened, mischievous child she fled up the 
garden path. 

Paul was suddenly aflame. He found it impossible to 
make conversation with the old man, and soon all three 
retired. In his room Paul listened to the others. The 
old man slept downstairs, the boy in the attic, and the 
girl occupied a room on the same floor as himself. Long 
after the men had settled for the night he could hear 
discreet sounds. His door was ajar, and he stood, hold¬ 
ing his breath, whilst a fury of erotic desires possessed 
him. So far no woman , who had thrown herself into 
his arms had escaped unscathed, but so far only women 
who were not immaculate had overtly challenged him. 
He had only to take a few steps, tap on her door, turn 
the handle—she would not cry out, for she was subtle, 
for all her uncouthness—and the rest he would know 
how to manage—but! 

He closed the door swiftly and went to sit on the edge 
of his bed. He hated to be faced by a choice between 


SOLO 


174 

strong desire and a sense of fair play. But above all 
things he hated vacillation. The girl was his for the 
taking—why hesitate? The risk for her? There were 
ways of obviating that. # 

He put the odious consideration out of his mind and 

began to undress. 

But in a moment he found himself at the door again, 
listening. Flinging the last scruple to the winds, he left 
the room, tiptoed along the passage, listened at her door, 
then gently opened it. 

The moon had risen and its beams made a pool of 
light on the carpet. He saw walls decked with magazine- 
cover girls, and a heap of garments strewn on a chair. 
Her face, turned slightly away from him, looked plump, 
like a baby’s, and one hand was thrown out. She was 
Hast asleep, and the room smelt—rather too much like a 
bedroom. 

Silently as he had come, he regained his room, and 
sat on the window-sill to laugh. As if by magic his 
ardour had vanished, leaving him comfortable, yet out 
of sorts. Gradually the spell of the night wrapped itself 
round him. For a long while he sat gazing towards 
the silvered sea, drinking in the fragrance of unseen 
flowers and dew-sprinkled earth, a fragrance that made 
him home-sick for a home that didn t exist. Early in 
the morning he would set out for the ship. To his 
shipmates he would say nothing of the adventure. How 
should any sailor understand his anomalous, blend of 
depravity and squeamishness? To think that virtue could 
be suspended on such tenuous filaments! 

A distant clock struck the hour, and an alien odour 
crept into his nostrils—the odour of eucalyptus. He 
scarcely noticed this phenomenon, and like a true sailor 
fell asleep as soon as his head was pillowed. In his 
dreams, however, he heard the old chimes which had 
gained such an uncanny hold on him. Their message 


SOLO 


175 


this time, put into words, might have been, “So you see, 
you’re not as chaotic as you thought. You have a 
method, and it’s no less wise for being instinctive. Fas¬ 
tidiousness is next to morality—it often serves you bet¬ 
ter.” 


4 

Before putting to sea Paul laid in a supply of books. 
For some time past his reading had been haphazard, if 
voluminous. At Eureka he provided himself with the 
pick of what the leading bookshop had to offer, and at 
the last moment had the salesman include a little green 
paper-bound play by a certain G. B. Shaw, whose name 
he had often seen quoted, as though this writer were a 
“character” in the world of letters. 

Not until he was nearing Toulon, after a fatiguing, 
storm-ridden voyage did he dip into Man and Superman. 
Then occurred a mental event of the first importance— 
an event more memorable than the mutinous day when 
he had longed to be set ashore on his coral island. After 
the first few repliques he felt the stirring of a mighty 
revival of heterodoxies. Issues he had in his first youth¬ 
ful rebelliousness dismissed wholesale trooped back retail 
for a rehearing. A sun of intellectual emancipation made 
a rift in the adolescent haze obscuring his vision. 

He recalled his boyish struggle to keep his soul intact 
from the designs of the officiously pious, the fury and 
exasperation with which he had talked down zealots 
who had decoyed him to “Bethel” meetings in remote 
seaports. Since those days he had been a constant foe 
towards all forms of blind orthodoxy, but it had been 
difficult to find words for his iconoclasm. Well, here 
they were! Paul drank them in; felt them settling into 
him, stiffening his resolutions, giving him that rare 
gratification: the discovery, after the event, that there 
exist sound, assertable reasons for acts committed on 


176 


SOLO 


impulse. Shaw cut capers for him, and Paul laughed 
with the hysterical abandon of a child who has had to 
be violently diverted out of a long fit of moping. Shaw 
gleefully rattled the skeletons Paul had refused to rever¬ 
ence but had not known how to dispose of. Shaw cried 
his healthy, heathenish cause from the rooftops; cham¬ 
pioned him, and put him forward as a champion. And 
at the end seemed to say, “Lord, what fools these mortals 
be r And Paul cordially agreed, in blissful forgetfulness 
of his own mortality. 

“Your friends,” said Don Juan to the Devil, are the 
dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are 
only shaved and starched ... not generous, only pro¬ 
pitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful 
a t a p—liars every one of them, to the very backbone 
of their souls!” 

At one stroke the adolescent cobwebs were swept away. 
In the store-house of his mind Paul had been trying 
to range parcels that had been delivered there labelled 
“virtue",” “vice”—or whatever—but containing suspi¬ 
ciously incompatible lumps. Off with the wrappers! That 
was Shaw’s way. And the process of classification went 
on apace, almost automatically. 

From the dry deck to which Shaw had caught him 
up, Paul surveyed with an ineffable sense of safety a 
seaful of floundering limbs and debris where he had been 
desperately keeping his own ego afloat. At a bookshop 
in Marseilles he found little green copies of other plays, 
and put them into his handbag to read in the train which 
was to bear him towards Germany. 


VII 

I 

Familiar as he had become with the process of dis¬ 
illusionment, Paul was not quite prepared for the stony 
reality of Munich, for the icy rain that soaked his hat 
and filled the gutters with despairing tears, nor for the 
blundering tram-way guard who forgot to set him down 
at Ohmstrasse and carried him to the outer rim of 
Schwabing. Neither was he prepared for the ironic Filhr 
di’ Gott with which an octogenarian Portier waved him 
into the world again after informing him that Frau 
Stiglmayr had been dead fifteen years—a certain Frau 
Stiglmayr whose name and address had somehow per¬ 
sisted in his head since childhood. Damp to the very 
soul he sought out a cheap hotel near the Hauptbahn- 
hof, made his way to the Hof theater to hear Fra 
Diavolo —of all operas the least meet and fitting—then 
tossed for hours in a narrow bed, under an absurd 
feather Decke, sleepless and disconsolate. 

Romance, he had learned, was not a property of 
strange lands and situations, but a magical lens through 
which one viewed utterly unmagical objects—a spurious 
beautifier. Nevertheless it was disheartening to give the 
lie to certain beguiling fictions. However absurd it may 
have been for a small boy, on the strength of a doddering 
musician’s inscription, to envisage Munich as enchanted 
ground, however absurd it may have been for him to 
177 


i 7 8 


SOLO 


count on culling from Frau Stiglmayr’s lips secrets that 
had gone up in smoke through Aunt Verona’s kitchen 
chimney, Paul passionately regretted the necessity of 
disabusing his mind of the small boy’s gracious fallacies. 
If it were merely a question of setting the small boy to 
rights regarding specific facts, the matter would have 
been simple and painless. But the correction threatened 
the very structure of life, its melodic line, its rhythms, 
and the supporting harmonies. It implied that the boy, 
thanks to false romantic premises, had been directing 
his life towards untenable conclusions. Yet, despite his 
nineteen-year-old conviction that reality was one thing 
and romance an illegitimate other, he could not quite 
bring himself to admit that the boy had been wrong, 
that & his engrossed pursuit of will-o’-the-wisps had been 
the misapplication of energy Reason now made it out 
to be. After all, Romance had made life appear to be 
worth exerting oneself for. But for the lens, would it 
not have seemed prosaic and uninviting? Perhaps not. 
Perhaps if one had envisaged life as prose instead of 
poetry, a truer sense of values would have been de¬ 
veloped in accordance with which life would have held 
forth more substantial lures. As it was, he reflected 
with the morbidness of youth, lifelong addiction to 
romance had undermined his constitution; and his crav¬ 
ing for chimeres was none the less strong for his know¬ 
ledge of their debilitating effect. 

Among the frequenters of cafes and concert-halls he 
tried to pick out people who might, thirty years ago or 
more, have sat tense and eager at the feet of Aunt 
Verona. In carriages and motor-cars he scanned faces 
for some sign of the aristocracy that had petted her. 
But all he found was a collection of folk who resembled 
their kind the world over. To think of Aunt Verona 
in their midst—whether the weird, broken Aunt Verona 
or the admirable artiste of the old musician’s inscription 


SOLO 


179 


—was a violation of all verisimilitude. Aunt Verona 
was merely the memory of a woman who had been seen 
through the magical lens by himself and a few choice 
spirits, while the cities which had been her glorious set¬ 
ting were memories even less tangible. 

Munich, in short, and Vienna—to which he repaired 
—were dead, just as Aunt Verona was dead. Sur¬ 
rounded by students of divers nationalities, listening to 
subsidized performances, giving heed to masters who 
upheld the traditions of Brahms, Bruckner, and Mah¬ 
ler, he was as far from the fabulous soirees as he had 
been at the age of twelve—even farther, for he had lost 
the faith in their fabulousness which had inspired his 
boyhood. Another bitter drop in the cup was a guess 
that the poor old composer had been in the same leaky, 
romantic boat. 

True, viewed as a mere example of reality, Vienna, 
like Munich, presented historical and artistic splendours. 
But these partook of the nature of shells. Again it was 
a question of his unbridled hopes. Music, he had per¬ 
suaded himself, was a medium for the conveying of in¬ 
effable messages, a universal language designed to bring 
balm to the hearts of a humanity befuddled by words. 
Yet in Vienna, this most eclectic of shrines, where re¬ 
nowned masters and brilliant pupils foregathered, his 
notions were regarded as hallucinations, albeit of an 
amiable faddist whom it was easy -enough to humour. 
The naive wisdom of Mr. Silva counted for nothing 
among men who knew all there was to know on the sub¬ 
ject of music. After Paul had aired his views the con¬ 
versation fell back on an exchange of personalities. 
There was praise for so-and-so’s manner of “rendering” 
a certain fugue; condemnation for so-and-so’s “inter¬ 
preting” of a certain etude; but no apparent comprehen¬ 
sion of the spiritual influence exercised by Bach and 
Chopin. Certain factions maintained that the fingers 


i8o 


SOLO 


should be raised high and the keys struck; others heat¬ 
edly advocated the production of all effects through the 
graduated weight of the arm. Even methods of pedal¬ 
ling were discussed with an earnestness that would have 
done credit to state legislators. 

The students seemed to Paul a collection of precocious 
babies; their masters mere coaches whose picturesque 
senility was mistaken for a sort of godhead. Virtuosity 
was the game, music merely a ball for athletic virtuosi 
to kick. For five, six, seven hours a day one was ex¬ 
pected to engage in digital acrobatics; each composition 
was examined, phrase by phrase, like a strange machine, 
its soul, vaguely indicated by such marks as espressivo, 
andante doloroso, was reduced to terms of metronomics 
and pedal pressures; the objective of the whole process 
being to come upon a platform and evoke thunderous 
commendation from auditors who would judge the per¬ 
formance not by its success or failure in conveying the 
composer’s sooth—of which the great majority of them 
would be as egregiously ignorant as the performer— 
but by its approximation to or divergence from the per¬ 
formance of some current “genius,” whose title had been 
bestowed in accordance with similar standards of judg¬ 
ment. True, among masters and pupils there was end¬ 
less talk concerning interpretation, but the point, more 
often than not, was lost in a haystack of pedantic quib- 
bling. 

In the composition classes a like spirit prevailed. 
Students were not encouraged to express, in musical 
terms, some heartfelt conviction; they were required to 
compose a hymn on Monday, a minuet or a canon on 
Thursday, in conformity with grammar—a certain mar¬ 
gin being allowed for breaches “in good usage,” which 
was to say, solecisms made by robust rebels like Wag¬ 
ner and Berlioz. Between exercises of this sort the 
lecturer struck intervals on a concealed keyboard and 


SOLO 


181 

asked members of the class to name them, by ear. All 
which, while constituting a reality, of its kind most ex¬ 
cellent, was not the pot of gold. 

For weeks Paul went faithfully to classes and con¬ 
certs at the Musikvereinsgebaude, in the hope that illum¬ 
ination would break through the fog of drudgery. 
Away from the studios, at a hired piano, his soul went 
on rare excursions, but these were in the nature of tru¬ 
ancy. The rest was school all over again—school of the 
j’ ai-tu-as-il-a variety; and as he had once fled the dron¬ 
ing chorus of verb-conjugators to vivify the verbs in 
books, so now he retired to make music that should tout 
simplement sound forth proclamations otherwise inex¬ 
pressible. He was no longer the mutinous boy chafing 
at drill; he was the man realizing that his goal was not 
the goal of his neighbours. For him the prescribed 
exercises were a mockery. The faster his fingers flew, 
the more sardonic became the laughter of scales and 
arpeggios, the more maliciously they echoed the truth 
of his bitter discovery. Music had once been the chan¬ 
nel for everything mystical in his nature. He could 
lose his soul in it and gloriously “find” it in the process. 
But in the long interval since he had “nearly been able 
to play the Liszt sonata” his soul had perforce sought 
other vehicles. It was too late to harness musical steeds 
for its journey. Musicians evinced an interest in his 
talent; he might, with application, become a virtuoso. 
Yet though he mastered every trick and played with a 
comprehension surpassing that of all his contemporaries, 
a deep importunate part of himself would still remain 
mute. Audiences might listen spellbound and applaud 
to the echo; yet at the end of his most exalted perform¬ 
ance he would stand before them—as he had stood that 
night years ago in Fremantle—unhappy, almost ashamed, 
conscious that they had taken the shadow for the sub¬ 
stance and mistaken the superficial message of a sonata 


182 


SOLO 


or a concerto for the message that lay far beneath it, 
writhing impotently and clamouring for expression. 

All this came to him one hot summer’s evening as he 
sat in the Volksgarten staring at the foam in his glass 
and hearing an orchestra wind its way through the 
second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. 
The suave undulations lulled his mind, drove away all 
distracting thoughts, and left him a strange clairvoy¬ 
ance. With a numb heart he took stock of his latest 
disillusionment. Music, the last stronghold of his 
romanticism, must be abandoned. He must marshal his 
forces again and seek higher ground. His message, 
whatever it should prove to be, was not for the casual 
souls who imbibed music as their bodies imbibed beer. 
Whatever it was, it was serious—as serious as religion, 
and of the nature of religion. It might never be mani¬ 
fested to himself, much less to the world. In that case 
what a fatuous farce life would have been! Better 
never to have wondered and hoped and ventured. 
But dignified dumbness was preferable to cheap sound. 
Rather than turn himself into a public entertainer he 
would withdraw to some coral island—and live in 
seclusion. 

Suddenly, and for the fourth or fifth time in his life, 
the world stood still. He had heard a rustling sound 
beside him and a familiar voice calling, “Paul, Paul!” 

Only a fat man with a fat and foody family were 
near him. But for a moment he had been in the pres¬ 
ence of Aunt Verona. The illusion of it was still with 
him as he rose and made his way between 
tables and miniature trees. He was thrilled, dazed, un¬ 
nerved. 

Once outside, he found himself in a bog of doubt. 
The city was a stony waste peopled by the living dead. 
Aunt Verona, thirty years before, had turned her back 
on it, and later, from the depths of her retreat, made 


SOLO 183 

one more despairing attempt but ended by burning her 
record. “Futile” was the word she had used for it. 

He walked on and on through the streets—afraid. 

2 

For two years Paul lived in Vienna, supplementing 
his savings by sums earned as accompanist for violinists 
and singers. His tardy discovery that music was an 
art rather than a philosophy was followed by the real¬ 
ization of his abysmal want of knowledge. Disap¬ 
pointed in the studios, he was arrested by the libraries. 
He was bewildered by the scope of human erudition and 
appalled by his own nescience. 

Only when he reminded himself that, like differently 
prepared foodstuffs in a grocer’s shop, all knowledge 
must be reducible to a comparatively small number of 
ingredients, did he have courage to take his education in 
hand. Then with feverish zeal he gave himself over 
to the task. Works on every subject, from sex to sun¬ 
spots, in German, English and French—he tackled one 
by one. His most momentous finds were in the realm 
of speculative thought. Schopenhauer, Marx, Taussig, 
Bergson, and a dozen minor thinkers, he weighed in his 
balance. Each battered at the wall of truth from a dif¬ 
ferent angle; each made breaches; none got through. 
Yet despite the accretions he was stuffing into his mental 
store-room, there was no longer a sense of chaos. A 
reliable principle of selection was quietly at work, rang¬ 
ing facts and opinions on shelves from which they could 
be readily reached down in case of discussion. 

Of discussion there was plenty, for he inevitably came 
into contact with men who were artists and philosophers 
by virtue of their youth if not their talent. Their elders, 
weary of trying to know everything, had in most cases 
adopted some theory upon which, as upon string sus¬ 
pended in water, they could crystallize all the facts they 


SOLO 


184 

were capable of taking into solution. One old man in 
particular interested Paul, a university professor whose 
pet theory was that Jean-Jacques Rousseau constituted a 
sort of head waters from which flowed all the streams 
of present-day literature, art, philosophy, education and 
national policy. He had written articles tracing Rous¬ 
seau’s influence on Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Danton, Tol¬ 
stoi, Novalis, Ruskin, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whit¬ 
man, Wagner, and a dozen other men of genius. 

Paul accompanied him one day to an exhibition of 
impressionistic paintings hoping that, for once, the 
theory would be left in the Garderobe with the walking- 
sticks, but no sooner were they inside the gallery than the 
professor began, “All this, lieber Freund, is foreshad¬ 
owed in Rousseau. These impressionists feel they are 
unique in their feelings and must express this uniqueness 
by discarding rules. Jean-Jacques, you’ll remember, 
said, ‘Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j’ai vuf ” 

The quotation brought Paul up with a start. Ever 
since he could remember he had been saying something 
quite like that to himself. Like Rousseau, and a whole 
world full of tiresome souls, he had been priding him¬ 
self on the fact that he was unlike everybody else. Sud¬ 
denly it seemed to him that there was no particular dis¬ 
tinction in being unique. Certainly if uniqueness led to 
nothing more distinguished than the turning out of messy 
green, yellow and pink canvases there was little to be 
said for it. His reaction to writers like Nietzsche and 
Max Stirner had been a revulsion from superegoistic 
doctrines. Once more he saw the advantages of being 
a “quite ordinary boy.” 

On the other hand, he was oppressed by the swarm 
of people amongst whom he was moving; he often 
longed to retire into himself and “shut upon his retreat 
the floodgates of the world.” Once, in the crowded, 
smoky atmosphere of a cafe, he caught himself under- 


SOLO 


1S5 

lining the following verses in Shelley’s Julian and Mad- 
dalo: 


“I love all waste 

And solitary places; where we taste 
The pleasure of believing what we see 
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.” 

He found he was getting a surfeit of books, a surfeit 
of discussion. His daily habits became more haphaz¬ 
ard. He took longer walks into the suburbs. He 
fraternized with irresponsible students and returned the 
glances of still more irresponsible young women. One 
of these, Lottchen, upon whose favours he was believed 
to have an option that amounted to a proprietary right, 
gave him, through a chance remark, a clue to his state 
of mind. She had asked about his plans for the future, 
and he had replied half-heartedly that he would prob¬ 
ably return to the sea. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “you must 
look a perfect darling in uniform!” 

He had a bantering smile for her femininity, and 
while Lottchen assured him she adored everything that 
wore a uniform, “even the messenger-boys,” his mind 
wandered on to its own circuitous conclusions. All life 
was an effort to effect some satisfactory reconciliation 
between uniformity and one’s complex individualism. 
For all women, and most men, uniformity was an end 
in itself. For him most varieties of human uniformity 
ignored or did violence to his passion for self-develop¬ 
ment, for the broadest sympathy and comprehension. 
In “that untravelled world” of which he was for ever 
catching glimpses that lured him on, was a sublime sort 
of uniformity for which, more and more ardently, he 
thirsted. 

He knew Vienna held nothing further for him. He 
was not at all reconciled to the thought of a career on 


186 


SOLO 


the sea; but there one could at least take a dead reckon¬ 
ing of one’s progress, and plan some course for the 
future. 


3 

By way of Berlin and Hamburg, the famous old Ham¬ 
burg —but not at all conspicuously stocked with Bech- 
stein pianos—Paul journeyed to Holland and England. 
Dwindling funds restricted his movements during the 
following weeks, as well as preparation for nautical ex¬ 
aminations. When the certificate of Master Mariner was 
handed to him he had little more than enough money 
for his fare to Liverpool, where he was to join a cargo 
ship bound for Bombay. A stroke of fortune had 
brought him face to face in Fenchurch Street with the 
former apprentice he had known in Hong Kong. This 
young man was now second officer of a smart passenger 
liner and had found Paul a berth as third officer in a 
cargo ship belonging to the same company. 

Although Paul cherished a retrospective fondness for 
his chum tinged with a new goodwill for the friendly 
assistance, he was at a loss to understand what had 
brought them, in the beginning, so closely together, and 
was relieved when the time came for parting. For other 
reasons, however, the parting left him forlorn. 

“You’ll be all right now, old man,” his friend said in 
farewell. “You’ve a good berth, and the company’ll do you 
well if you stick. Good luck and bong voyage and all 
that sort of thing!” 

Paul accepted these good wishes in the spirit in which 
he had accepted his berth: gratefully, but without elation. 
For just as he had outgrown his boyish attachment to 
the debonair apprentice—he recalled now that he had, 
with a trace of femininity, secretly adored the apprentice’s 
uniform: shades of Gritty and Lottchen!—so, he felt 
he had outgrown his berth. It seemed absurd to indulge 


SOLO 


187 

such misgivings before the ink was dry on his Master’s 
papers; but the misgivings were all the more ominous 
on that account. 

They returned with strange emphasis when he boarded 
his new ship. “Been up to London, have you, Mr. 
Minas?” began the captain, by way of breaking the ice. 

“Yes, sir,” replied Paul—then whimsically added the 
familiar phrase from the ribald sailor song, “To see 
what I could see.” 

“Ay—and what did you see at all?” 

It was at that moment that the misgivings returned; 
for how was he to tell a hearty skipper that he had seen 
a play by Barrie, caricatures by Max Beerbohm, quasi¬ 
lords and ladies bouncing upon tame steeds in Rotten 
Row ; and—God save the mark—the Wallace Collection! 

4 

After two years consulting of and catering to a tyran¬ 
nical set of tastes, desires and principles, Paul found 
unexpected refreshment in the simple routine of the sea, 
where superior officers shouldered the burden of making 
decisions. The sense of freedom he experienced as the 
Cranmore churned her way out of the Mersey was, in 
view of his duties, circumscribed, but he concluded that 
the sense of freedom in any one plane of being was con¬ 
tingent upon imprisonment of faculties in other planes; 
there was always a string to the kite. Abstract liberty, 
like the geometrical point, was merely a fagon de parler 
—an unstable sea upon which only Peters were rash 
enough to walk, and from which only Peters were rescued. 
Shelley the poet, enamoured of liberty, impersonated a 
cloud and offered himself to the West Wind, but Shelley 
the citizen came croppers. Poor old Jean-Jacques, 
chained worshipper of liberty and reprehensible amateur 
of morality, while indulging in speculative vertiges , took 
care to keep his feet on the ground. “J’aime beaucoup 



SOLO 


188 

ce tournoiement” he confessed, then spoilt—or saved 
the situation by stipulating, “Pourvu que je sois en 
surete.” Paul knew, in short, that he was imbibing an 
intoxicating draught, and was fully aware of the effect 
of intoxicants. 

On this occasion the effect endured about five days. At 
the end of that period he saw the coast of Spain, and 
discovered that Spain, which he had not visited, meant 
more to him, literally and figuratively, than Bombay, 
with which he was familiar. He was standing on the 
main deck, supervising the lashing down of a row .of 
stalls containing polo ponies. The boxes had become in¬ 
secure during a siege of bad weather in the Bay of 

Biscay. . . 

His eyes rested on the dim shore-line, and his thoughts, 
mounted on a leisurely Rosinante, ambled inland. Castles 
in Spain—Castilian women of an exotic blondness, like 
blood-oranges — Carmen — Lazarillo — Figaro—amber 
grapes, bull-rings, acrid cafes where livid, moustached 
women and tight-trousered men danced to schottisches in 
which rhythms swished like flaming petticoats under the 
enveloping skirt of the melody. He pictured John Tan¬ 
ner in the Alhambra, enjoyed Granada with a Shavian 
relish, then snorted at the incongruity. He was a ro¬ 
manticist despite his Shavianism, and he began to suspect 
Shaw of the same wretched defection. One must be 
anti-romantic to be Shavian, and anti-Shavian to be 
Shawlike! 

He turned from the rail with a sigh. As usual the 
daydream had ended in an intellectual paradox. 

And that poor, caged pony! A Lascar deckhand had 
hit it over the nose to punish it for trying to kick the 
back out of its box. Why shouldn t it kick the back out 
of its box! 

As a deputy of Providence it was Paul’s duty to repri¬ 
mand the Lascar in sharp pidgin-English for abusing a 


SOLO 


189 

thousand-guinea horse; that duty done, he proceeded, as 
a fellow-prisoner, to explain to the pony, in terms of pats 
and duckings, that freedom was a relative quantity, not 
to be attained by vicious hoofs. If the pony had re¬ 
torted, “Do you call it freedom to be delivered into the 
hands of some harebrained cavalry officer whose notion 
of what conduces to my welfare is to make me gallop 
over a dusty field after a little ball he merely wants to 
hit f y Paul would have replied, “On the whole, yes. 
You’ll be better off, for instance, than your ninety-second 
cousins on Dartmoor. Notwithstanding which, throw 
the silly ass if you can—and a clean getaway to you!” 

As the Crcmmore lurched through a bright blue, early- 
autumn Mediterranean, Paul’s spirits reflected the sea’s 
suppressive calm. He had learned the ways of the ship, 
weighed her crew in the balance, found it wanting, and 
settled down for the voyage. It was depressing to ac¬ 
knowledge how easily he had established his footing. It 
meant that during the remainder of the voyage there 
would be nothing but books, the caprices of the weather, 
and passing landmarks to provide stimulation. And on 
subsequent voyages the prospect of slow, monotonous 
promotion. One day he would be put in command of 
a ship; then of a bigger ship. By that time his hair 
would be grey, or gone. And the rest of the men 
seemed to think—but what mattered what they thought! 
His mental processes never tallied with those of his 
neighbours, never had, and never would, on land or 
on sea, world without end, Amen! Why trouble then 
to look back or forward, why do anything but accept 
life as it was, and sleep whenever possible! 

At Port Said the Cranmore was to coal and unload a 
marble statue for a pasha’s palace. Paul obtained leave, 
drew some money, dressed in civilian clothes, and went 
ashore to look for a sextant and other articles which lack 
of funds had prevented him from buying in England. 


SOLO 


190 

Down the gangway; into a clumsy bumboat painted 
red and blue; through hordes of fruit, cigarette ana 
postcard venders; towards the breakwater near which 
brown-legged fishermen stood up to their knees in water 
hauling at nets; past a towering Orient liner from Aus¬ 
tralia; along teeming quays—the red tarbooshes, the 
Arabic inscriptions on signboards, the solicitations of 
dirty dragomans—the whole miscellany welded together 
in a brassy light which sharpened lines and angles all 
under a pearl and turquoise sky. Already, at this wicked 
portal, Paul had recaptured the smell of the East. 

As he left the quay a ragged urchin came running up 
to advertise the attractions of a bawdy house prepared 
to cater to the most exactingly perverse. The proffered 
enticements, each more indecent than the last, Paul de¬ 
clined with a shake of the head, but let the boy complete 
the catalogue. There was something piquant in the con¬ 
trast between the tender years of the child and his mon¬ 
strous sapience. “Hi, Mist’ Ferguson, you wan see 
_» an d the diminutive tout put forward a final 

Ferguson was a generic name for Englishmen, inter¬ 
changeable with Disraeli and Cornwallis-West. Paul had 

heard enough. „ 

“Ecklahburra!” he cried. Kaleb! 

And at the sudden menace in his tone the boy scuttled 

^Fascinating, putrid land! Its very babes were born 
wicked. Paul had a new conception of what was meant 
by the doctrine of original sin. As a boy he had sup¬ 
posed “original” sin signified some specially ingenious 

form of iniquity. , 

The book shops as usual lured him, but he coveted 
so many objects that he ended by buying none, and wan¬ 
dered on In two more hours he would be back on board, 
bound south through the canal, an automaton in the 


SOLO 


191 

service of automata. A satiric comment, which he had 
heard sailors repeat on stormy nights, was running 
through his head, “Who wouldn’t sell a farm and go to 
sea!” 

A craving for isolation sent him walking away from 
the central streets, beyond the railway station, down a 
barren road towards infinite flat stretches of sand. In 
a grubby shop by the wayside he stopped to drink Turk- 
ish coffee and eat sweet Syrian pastries. Then he re¬ 
turned to the glaring waste and continued his aimless 
walk. He was a small boy again, playing hookey. Out¬ 
wardly he trembled, but an unwonted inner calm, like 
that of a top at full spin, was stealing over him. Some 
conflict was being waged between two parts of his 
nature. He had no desire to take sides; was not even 
curious as to the outcome. 

At length he sat down for sheer weariness in the shade 
of a peppercorn tree by the side of a deserted camel track. 
On all sides the wilderness extended. Far to his left 
were the only signs of civilization: low walls and a huddle 
of roofs. At long intervals, a few hundred yards before 
him, ships passed, as though slowly cutting their way 
through banks of sand. There was no trace of the rib¬ 
bon of water that floated them. 

The conflict was at an end, and the strange inner calm 
had enveloped him in a physical numbness that left his 
mind pellucid. In planes of existence infinitely remote, 
clocks must be ticking, pens recording, throats laughing 
and cursing, engines grinding and propelling. Here, 
inertia reigned, unchallengeably. 

An odd procession of young Minases trooped before 
him: timid, cocksure, lonely, eager, disappointed, ecstatic 
and morose boys—all authentic versions of himself, and 
all dead. 

A vision of the future succeeded. The boyish Minases 
were sent scurrying by sadder, wiser ghosts, constitut- 


192 


SOLO 


ing a less definite and less diversified company. Some 
suspicion of the futility of their existence characterized 
and related them, and at the end of the procession trudged 
a weary old man, shabby, hungry, disdainful. 

Paul looked “before and after,” but without pining. 
The emotions which stirred within him seemed as im¬ 
personal as the delicate rustling of leaves overhead. His 
very life he shared with the tree, for he drew it from 
the same infinite source. The universe was a mint. He 
was a coin; the tree another. When the right time came 
each would be withdrawn from currency, to be remelted, 
restamped and reissued. It little mattered how one were 
invested, provided one kept in circulation. Even if one 
stepped out of circulation voluntarily, the resources of 
life would be none the poorer. 

He lay at full length on the sand, and slept. When 
he awoke, the shadow of the tree extended far beyond 
his feet. He sat up and shuddered, for in his dreams 
he had been present at his own funeral. Miss Todd 
had sung “Abide with Me” and flatted. And the chimes 
of Fremantle tolled his knell. 

The sounds he had heard in his sleep were the siren 
and bells of a passing ship. He watched her for a few 
moments, then turned his gaze far down the canal, in the 
direction of the last warehouses outside the town. There 
a big black, top-heavy steamer was approaching. His 
heart beat faster, and he sat back against the trunk of 
the tree, instinctively straightening his coat and necktie 
as if in anticipation of an encounter. 

Slowly, slowly, the Cranmore advanced. He could 
hear, across acres of sand, the pulse of her engines, the 
breathing of her funnel. She was alive; he was fond 
of her; and she was carrying with her all his old life, 
carrying it away beyond recall. 

On the decks he made out figures and identified them 
by their positions. Behind the house were the rows of 


SOLO 


193 

stalls. The restless pony would miss him if none of the 
men did. 

The port-hole of his own cabin! His bags were there 
j —his books and music and letters, his clothes and the 
photographs of six or seven women, mistresses of a night 
or a week or a month. 

The disciplines of the passing life were in their way 
good—necessary for those simple fellows on deck, but 
not meant for him. His disciplines must be self-imposed. 
This very act of running away—instinctive, unpremedi¬ 
tated as it had been—his mates would judge lawless; 
but it was in reality a stern and imperious duty. 

When the ship was a mere speck surmounted by a 
scarf of smoke, Paul rose and set his face towards the 
north. The exalted calm had basely deserted him, and 
there had been tears in his eyes. He felt “like a mother¬ 
less chile, a long ways from home,” and dreaded to re¬ 
enter the sinister town. Two years ago he would have 
been heartened by his hoard. But that was gone, and 
in its place he had a paltry meed of experience gained 
in the two years which had seen him over the threshold 
of manhood. One ingredient in that experience was un¬ 
worldliness ; another was doubt; another indifference. 
Three traitors in the camp! 

Twilight overtook him and he reached the streets as 
they were awakening to their evening gaiety. A cool 
breeze stole through date palms in parched courts, and 
life whispered meaningly from shadowy doorways. 
Snatches of laughter sought him out, and pungent 
odours. From the inner harbour came the music of a 
marine band. Some magical agency was conspiring to 
throw a glamour over the sordidness of his surround¬ 
ings. 

On reaching the water-side he came into view of a 
liner ablaze with lights. A hundred noisy coolies were 
passing sacks of coal into her side. Small boats clus- 


194 


SOLO 


tered about the gangway which swarmed with gayly 
dressed women and men in dinner jackets—Dutch men 
and women gleeful at the interruption in their long jour¬ 
ney to Java. 

The sight caused Paul another swift change of mood. 
He envied those people on the gangway: envied them 
their easy camaraderie. 

He swung on his heel and walked towards the break¬ 
water, turning to the left when he reached the deserted 
beach. The brown shallow sea at his feet hissed like 
water spilt on a stove. To his right the statue of Les- 
seps stood black against the indigo curtain of night bro¬ 
caded with stars. Nearer, beyond the breakwater, was 
a tangle of masts where moored fishing-boats creaked 
like cradles. To his left the beach and the surf-crested 
rollers stretched unendingly. From the town behind 
him came stealthy echoes of civilization: the clanking of 
chains and winches, the rattle of wheels, the cries of 
boatmen, the sighing of dry leaves. The evening breeze 
made him shiver. 

If only one had the courage to walk to the end of the 
breakwater and disappear for ever! Who would even 
wonder what had become of him? He was half in love 
with easeful death.” He knew just what Keats had 
meant. 

A white-robed figure was running towards him from 
the direction of the road. “Hi, hi, Mist’ Ferguson— 
you wan’ see hoochie-koochie girl?” 

“What! You back, you little blighter!” 

The boy gave him a propitiatory grin. 

“Here—here’s a penny. Now hop it, or I’ll bloody 
well drown you!” 

The boy decided to cut his losses and sell out, as 
Paul turned back once more towards the port which 
struck him as a sort of overgrown pest-house for lost 
and infected souls 


VIII 


I 

At the station he found that a train was about to leavs 
for Cairo. He boarded it and booked a seat in the 
dining car. Since breakfast he had had nothing but 
two Syrian pastries and a tiny cup of coffee. Until din¬ 
ner was announced he sat staring through the window, 
as the train sped beside the canal, which was revealed 
from time to time by the searchlights of lonely steam- 
ers feeling their way to or from Suez. The other occu¬ 
pants of his compartment were swarthy, prosperous men, 
whose noses and eyes reminded Paul of illustrations in 
the family Bible at Hale’s Turning. 

When he took his place at the table he found opposite 
him a robust young man of thirty-two or three with fiery 
hair and alert blue eyes. His appearance, manner and 
apparel proclaimed him Irish-American. Paul suspected 
him of a desire to make talk and addressed himself to 
his food. Casual conversation could only be built on a 
foundation of self-confidence. The stranger, having 
enough and to spare, overrode Paul’s reserve. 

“I wouldn’t eat that if I was you, friend,” he began. 

Paul, on the point of lifting a slice of tomato to his 
mouth, paused and looked at the speaker. 

“Why not?” 

“It ain’t safe to eat uncooked vegetables in this part 
of the world. You’re new here, ain’t you?” 

Paul laughed, and went on eating his salad. “Yes, 
but hungry enough to take risks.” 

i95 


196 


SOLO 


“Then don’t ever say I didn’t warn you!” The 
American spoke with his mouth full of baked potato. 

“Thanks,” said Paul, at a loss to handle the other’s 
abrupt goodwill. 

The American read encouragement in Paul’s hesita¬ 
tion. Pointing with his fork to an untouched slice of 
tomato, he announced, in genial tones: 

“I fired one o’ them at a priest once—in school.” 

“Good for you!” Paul exclaimed. “Did you hit him ?” 

“Did I? Say, listen, I can see the juice runnin’ down 
Father Mulligan’s neck to this day.” 

“Did you get caned for it?” 

“Caned! I got canned. They kicked me out o’ school 
so hard I’m still goin’!” 

“A bit drastic,” Paul commented. 

“They was tryin’ to make priests of us. Can you 
imagine me bein’ a priest?” 

“It does take a bit of imagining.” 

The American was reliving his past. “What didn’t 
hit Father Mulligan kept on goin’, see. It was in geog¬ 
raphy, and there was a map of the world on the black¬ 
board. After bustin’ on his jaw the remains of the 
vegetable landed just about here,” and he waved his hand 
toward the black wilderness outside the window. 

“About here?” 

“It finally struck the middle of the world—get me? 
Egypt roughly.” 

“Oh—I see. So you, being Irish and consequently 
superstitious, took it as an omen—came here in accord¬ 
ance with that fateful indication? A sort of dickory- 
dickory-dock decision.” 

The American’s eyes flashed blue. “That’s about the 
size of it. After I’d put Egypt on the map, so to speak, 
why I felt like I sort of owned it, see, and finally come 
over.” 

“Had any luck?” 


SOLO 


197 


‘‘Well, friend, I been here three year now, and I guess 
I’ve livened the old place up some. If you’re not busy 
to-morrow drop around and see my joint. There ain’t 
another like it in the known world.” 

“I’ll bet there’s not,” said Paul with conviction. 

Over coffee and cigars the American talked of his 
youthful struggle, his experience as grocer’s clerk, book 
agent, and drummer for furniture and hardware. Even¬ 
tually he had persuaded a syndicate of manufacturers to 
send him to Egypt. 

“I got the agency now for two hundred and forty- 
nine lines,” he exclaimed. “Everything on God’s earth 
from stone-crushers to corn-plasters. I been wearing 
samples, riding on samples, brushing my teeth with 
samples, and feeding samples to the dog, see.” 

“And who buys your wares—natives or Europeans?” 

“Both—but natives mostly. I’ve just sold five hun¬ 
dred pair of rubbers, and it hasn’t rained here since 
Moses was a baby. Soon I’ll be sellin’ ’em snow-shoes! 

“I got a native staff for unpacking and shipping and 
gettin’ me in a mess generally, and an Armenian girl 
typist and bookkeeper to get me out again. Gee, she’s a 
wonder—talks every known tongue bar Choctaw.” 

“Don’t you find it pretty strenuous?” 

“You said it! I been up to Port Said to tell the 
American Consul to watch out for a good man. English¬ 
men won’t peddle chewing gum round the native quarters. 
I like ’em, mind you—but I can’t work with ’em. They 
want to sell goods like thermometers and spy-glasses, 
which don’t pay like chewing-gum. Gum’s infra dig , but 
it brings in the kale.” 

“I suppose Cairo is full of human oddities,” Paul 
remarked. “Strange minglings of tribes?” 

“Most of ’em don’t know their own selves what the 
devil they are.” 

“Then I ought to fit somewhere.” 


SOLO 


198 

“Staying for good?” 

“It’s time I stayed somewhere permanently. I’ve 
been nearly everywhere, you know, temporarily.” 

“Then that’ll account for your accent.” 

“It accounts for many things. Or, to put it the other 
way round, many things account for it —for my nomad¬ 
ism.” He felt he was being too precious for his audience, 
but went on. “I mean that accidents of birth, circum¬ 
stance, and temperament send one roaming over the 
world.” He had almost said, under the influence of the 
other’s idiom, “the known world.” 

“What’s your line?” 

“I haven’t decided yet. I’m looking for ideas.” 

The American puffed hard at his cigar, then leaned 
forward impulsively. “Say, listen!” he exclaimed. 
“Mebbe you and me could join forces!” 

Paul wondered whether he had enough strength of 
character to peddle chewing gum. 

The American accompanied him back to his compart¬ 
ment and expatiated upon social and commercial condi¬ 
tions in Egypt. 

“Where are you stayin’?” he asked, as the train drew 
into the terminus. 

Paul briefly explained the situation. 

His companion pursed his lips, slapped Paul on the 
shoulders, then said: 

“Listen here, son, you’re cornin’ right along with papa, 
see. I got two rooms at Shepheard’s. I only live there 
because it’s good for trade. Got to keep up the bluff, 
you know. I’ll sleep you on a sofa. My name’s Coyle— 
Patrick Coyle.” 

Paul gratefully took the hand extended to him. 
“Mine’s Minas,” he said. “I’m sure it’s most awfully 
decent of you to-” 

“Aw, keep the change,” briskly interposed his new 
friend. 



SOLO 


199 


2 

Paul was awakened next morning by a cold nose 
and a pair of clumsy paws. He was being earnestly 
smelt and he could hear an unwieldy tail, somewhere 
near the floor, thudding forth the time to an inward 
scherzo. He pulled the puppy on the sofa beside him, 
dodging its familiar tongue. 

Encouraged by this reception, Aida, by means of sniffs 
and writhings, sudden rigidities, sudden collapses, and a 
crescendo of tail-waggings, descanted on the joys of out¬ 
door life. She had already roused her master, and there 
were sounds of rushing water from the direction of the 
bathroom. 

Paul sprang up and went to the open window, shiver¬ 
ing at the chill of the morning air. The thin November 
sunlight had splashed its way into the garden at the 
back of the hotel, casting lacy shadows on the orange 
sand and picking out gay colours in the flower-beds. 

Breakfast, consisting of coffee, rolls, shredded wheat 
—in sample cakes—and cream, was brought into the 
sitting-room half an hour later, and Aida, with a deep, 
explosive sigh of resignation, collapsed before the closed 
door. 

“What’s her nationality? She looks a mut like every¬ 
body and everything else in this land, where even the 
breakfasts are Turkish-American.” 

“She is” Patrick assented. “A lady that was staying 
here for her health had a prize female cocker spaniel 
which got loose one day. The old dame hoped for the 
best, see, but the worst happened, and the spaniel up 
and had Ada—I named her after the opera. Mrs. Thing- 
amatite was mad as a hatter and ordered the litter 
drowned. I happened along as the guy was taking ’em 
to the Nile in a bag, and rescued this one, not realizing 
it was a her. I had nothin’ to feed her with but a 


200 


SOLO 


sample fountain-pen filler. One night she got rambunc¬ 
tious and bit the glass, and I near strangled her tryin’ 
to make her spit it out, see. After that I put rubber 
over it and all was well. 

“You’re a homely hound, ain’t you, Ada? Just a 
plain she-dog, just nothing, see.” 

A'ida had constructed this as an invitation to breakfast, 
and came towards the table, to be affectionately mauled. 

Paul was touched by this domesticity. “There’s a 
great deal to be said for internationalism, even in dogs,” 
he philosophized. “Aida may be impossible socially, but 
she’s very human—probably more so than her prize 
mamma. Lines of racial demarcation will gradually get 
blurred as the world goes on. They’ll have to, or the 
world wont go on. It’s a pet theory of mine that we’ll 
all end by being a world-wide family.” 

“You wouldn’t like your grandchildren being half 
Chinese, would you?” 

"I shouldn’t mind. As far as that goes, there’s no 
telling what our great-to-the-wth-power grandfathers may 
have been. It’s highly probable that you and I and 
your Arab servant are related, if one could trace back far 
enough.” 

“Thanks be to God we can’t then, for I’d brain that 
nigger if I found he was a relative of mine. He nearly 
started an Egyptian revolt when Ada stepped on his 
prayer-rug. She makes Abdul, my chief clerk’s, life a 
merry hell with her poor wet nose. Don’t you, old 
girl? Yes—we’re going day-days now.” 

They called at a neighbouring garage for Patrick’s 
most practical sample, a motor-cycle with a passenger 
seat at the rear and a basket attachment in front for 
Aida, who was grovelling and baying her ecstasy in tones 
which, had her mother been there to hear, would have 
served as a mortifying reminder of her guilt. 

“I’ll ride you round the old burg,” said Patrick, when 


SOLO 


201 


his guest was safely perched behind and Aida’s tail had 
been tucked in. 

“Everybody’s used to me and Ada now,’’ said Patrick. 
“At first the natives collected in crowds. It was free 
publicity for the byke. Not that I ride it for that. I’m 
just naturally odd. I’m me own trade-mark; I got a 
commercial personality.” 

By this time the engine was in an uproar, and two 
minutes later the trio were speeding past the deserted 
terrace of the hotel. 

True to his word, Patrick whizzed the length and 
breadth of Cairo, past mosques and palaces, bearing 
down on groups of red-slippered natives, for the fun of 
seeing them scatter. “It amuses the child,” he sang back 
after one close shave. 

At the summit of the Mohattam Hill they paused. 
Paul looked down at the huddle of roofs and streets 
surmounted by a hundred minarets, and thought of the 
biblical illustration of the temptation on the mount. 
Far away beyond the valley of the river, the pyramids 
were silhouetted like tents against the sky. 

The world before his eyes resembled an iridescent 
bubble. For the incomparable panorama, for the bound¬ 
less spaciousness of earth and sky, for the living antiquity 
of it all, the solidity of the stone and the delicacy of pale 
lights and colours that played over it, he felt emotions 
too deep for utterance. The prosaic commentaries of 
his companion he scarcely heard. Relieved from the im¬ 
mediate care of having to find a livelihood, he was free 
to absorb impressions. Every object, every colour and 
sonnd, were registering themselves on the sensitive plate 
of his mind, and he had to make an effort to respond 
to the other man’s announcement that it was time to turn 
back. 

Patrick made straight for the heart of the native 
quarter. 


202 


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“They said I was a fool to think of coming down 
here,” he explained as he steered a precarious course 
through the narrow, swarming Mouski. “So I just 
clowned around to let 'em keep on thinkin’ I was one, 
see. I even half thought so myself, till some of the wise 
guys from the European quarter come down and tried 
to buy me out. Then my shares went up in me own 
eyes. It pays to think big, believe me. Well, this here’s 
the joint.” 

They entered a narrow doorway and mounted dark 
stairs, past store-rooms filled with packing cases, to a 
dapper office furnished in mahogany and brightened by 
flowers. Patrick introduced Abdul and Mademoiselle 
Arzoumanian, the typist, a pallid young woman of thirty- 
odd, with a flat white nose, disconcertingly large black 
eyes, and a mop of rust-coloured hair. She wore a black 
frock and high-heeled shoes. Her hands were as broad 
as they were long, and her fan-shaped nails showed 
traces of having been bitten. Paul had the sensation of 
being in the presence of a moral dwarf. 

He wandered forth to inspect the unparalleled assort¬ 
ment of commodities, while his friend dictated contracts 
couched in grandiloquent terms, gave instructions in bad 
Arabic and bad French, and interviewed prospective buy¬ 
ers—Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs—Made¬ 
moiselle acting as interpreter. At 1.30 Abdul closed 
the office door, and Patrick leaned back in his swivel 
chair. Mademoiselle had gone into an improvised 
kitchen to cook luncheon, and Abdul was producing 
linen, crockery, and silver. 

Places were laid for four, and Paul, who had just 
left a ship on which the Lascar crew were regarded as 
some species of lower animal, was a little shocked when 
Abdul sat down with them. But he covered his surprise 
as successfully as Abdul concealed his horror at the pork 
chops the three infidels were preparing to devour. There 


SOLO 


203 


were great slabs of unleavened bread and a variety of 
sample pickles and jams. Abdul was encouraged to 
talk, and waxed eloquent in weird English. He spoke 
of a riot in the streets which had made his legs tremble. 
“It was very shame!” he concluded, with tragic eyes. 
By “shame” he meant “terrifying,” just as by “famous” 
he meant “agreeable to the palate. ,, The divergence of 
his vocabulary from the English norm was as wide as 
that of journeymen from that of metaphysicians; yet, 
Paul mused, one could with a little imagination reconcile 
any verbal discrepancies. One listened to a specialized 
vocabulary until one had heard it in a sufficient number 
of connotations to commence transposing. If this sort 
of thing were conscientiously done, one might end by 
discovering that every human being was saying exactly 
the same thing as every other. Every utterance, when 
balanced by the sum of circumferences which had brought 
it into formulation, was simply part of the One utterance, 
the eternal verity, just as every colour was simply a part 
of the spectrum that constituted light. Once we were 
intelligent enough to take this fact into reckoning, we 
should enter for the first time in history upon an era 
of civilization. He was sure Babel was the stumbling 
block in the way of human progress. 

After luncheon they mounted to the dazzling white 
roof. The old city sent up a thousand muffled sounds. 
Against patches of light and shade moved a living kaleido¬ 
scope : olive and copper faces under scarlet tarbooches; 
flowing gallabias of purple and garnet; vermilion and 
lemon-coloured slippers; lilac cotton tunics and jade silk 
scarfs; pasty black-gowned women with coquettishly 
transparent white veils. And through the tortuous 
thoroughfares passed donkeys laden with emerald-green 
fodder. Paul was lazy-minded enough to wonder how 
the beasts dared eat it uncooked. 

“We got to celebrate,” said Patrick, “seeing it’s your 


204 


SOLO 


first visit,” and he called out in Arabic to a dirty little 
girl behind a dirty Nottingham curtain. 

One by one the windows of neighbouring houses filled 
with the faces of women and children who showed a deep 
indulgent interest in the proceedings. 

After a whispered consultation with her family the 
little girl thrust her brown legs over the sill and dropped 
to the roof, advancing half boldly, half diffidently while 
Aida went forward with an official air to smell her. 
Abdul fetched boxes for the two men to sit on, and the 
girl tossed back her hair, pulled at her greasy pink frock, 
wriggled her bare toes, and over her shoulder exchanged 
pleasantries with her sisters. 

Then from the window, Mamma began to beat a tom¬ 
tom, which had an automatic effect upon the girl. Her 
little flat stomach and flat lips swayed; her slender arms 
rippled from shoulder to finger-tips. 

The festive spirit spread beyond the windows and 
rooftops to the street, and a blind, strolling nut-vender, 
singing topical ditties to attract custom, was induced to 
mount the stairs with his boy guide and contribute his 
talent. Abdul procured additional performers, and soon 
an assortment of Arabs, Turks, and hulking Sudanese 
niggers were performing strange dances whilst others 
chanted strange tunes, and all old Cairo rested from 
loafing to watch. 

The nut-vender sang of a notorious fat beauty of the 
town. Patrick, his hat pulled over his eyes, sat bolt 
upright on his box, earnestly bossing the show. “Qua- 
eesh!” was his expression for approval, sparingly vouch¬ 
safed. By way of honorarium he distributed samples of 
chewing-gum and toothpaste from a large open box. 
From time to time he tossed packages to the thronged 
windows and balconies, and the 4 ‘celebration” became, in 
true Irish-American fashion, a capital “ad.” 

Paul courted the midday sun, felt his nose getting red 


SOLO 


205 


under it. His box was tilted back, and he was lost in 
an indolent dream. He saw Aida striving to scale a 
wall and “adjust” a cat who merely blinked at her efforts. 
He thought, what a privilege to have been born a Su¬ 
danese nigger with gigantic hands and steel thighs, unable 
to think or even be distressed by the vague weight of 
unthinkability, unable to do anything but work and grovel 
and grin, with a flash of white teeth and husky gurgle, 
and do it from morning to night. He recalled the image 
of Becky States, and in imagination heard her melodious, 
growling baritone. Becky and that enormous coon! 
She would straightway have behaved like the prize 
spaniel. 

The tom-tom beat unceasingly. The little flat stomach 
never flagged. A toothless Turk pranced around the 
girl, uttering ribaldries that sent a rustle of merriment 
from window to window, and the niggers, lithe and 
powerful under their dingy pinafores, capered with un¬ 
believable grace, to the droning accompaniment of cracked 
old throats. 

Paul was losing all hold of fact. His body was anaes¬ 
thetized. His faculties had been distilled into an essence 
which pervaded the scene. He was the scene; he was 
the blind nut-vender, the dirty little girl, the puppy staring 
covetously at the cat, the gold and turquoise of air and 
sky, the pearly sheen of a minaret; their identity was his 


Until a voice said in his ear, “Say, listen, Minas, what 
do you think of Mademoiselle?” 

Paul came slowly out of his trance. For a moment 
he could attach no meaning to the words, and had to 
piece them together. What did he think of the Armenian 
typist ? 

“I’ve barely made her acquaintance,” he temporized. 
“Why?” 

“She’s my fiancee,” announced Patrick. 



206 


SOLO 


Paul sat up with a start and involuntarily cried, “No!” 

Then he realized he had wounded his friend, and set 
about to transform the implied protest of the exclama¬ 
tion into mere surprised interest. Patrick accepted this, 
along with Paul's perfunctory congratulations, and loudly 
praised the young woman's qualities. 

“She's a wonder,” was the refrain. “Speaks every 
known tongue.” 

Paul had observed that Aida avoided Mademoiselle. 
That told him more than Pat’s loquacious eulogies. His 
next mission then loomed before him. He must prevent 
Patrick Coyle from running untrue to type. 

3 

Within a few days Paul was appointed salesman, with 
a small salary and liberal commission. It was decided he 
should occupy himself with dealers of European origin, 
leaving his employer free to concentrate his attention on 
the natives. From the first Paul felt hostility behind 
the ingenuous smiles of Mademoiselle Arzoumanian, and 
knew his appointment had been made in defiance of her 
counsels. He concluded that Pat counted on him to win 
the confidence of merchants who were put off by brusque 
Irish-American methods, and he smiled at the thought 
that he should be chosen to beguile the conventional: 
he whose whole life had been an ode to vagrancy! Yet 
it flattered him that the man of business had detected, 
through the welter of the mariner's personality, some 
guiding current, some consistency definite enough to 
warrant his being placed in the category of men capable 
of meeting conventionality on its own ground. 

His new status obliged him to take stock of his qualifi¬ 
cations. Business experience was lacking, but his 
knowledge of men was fairly sound. He had discovered 
that the best way to gratify one’s curiosity about people 


SOLO 


20 7 


was to catch them off their guard; consequently he had 
cultivated disarming manners. His life at sea had not 
blunted the eminent presentability of his starched and 
combed childhood. 

He was conscious of the favourable impression he 
made during his first weeks in Cairo. When he had 
come to terms with Patrick Coyle he had ordered a 
wardrobe and engaged a small room at Shepheard’s. 
Lounging in company with his friend, he noticed that 
acquaintances of Coyle’s lingered to be introduced, and 
that their manner towards himself was an appreciable 
shade more deferential than toward the Irishman. This 
bred in him a slight contempt towards strangers that 
served to increase his prestige. Pat, swallowing his 
pride one evening, made an admission which confirmed 
Paul’s observation. 

“Say, listen, sonny,” said Patrick, when a prominent 
official had stopped to chat with them in the foyer of the 
opera house, after a performance of Carmen. “That guy 
used to cut me till you turned up. Gee, the way you got 
’em all guessing is a treat. The more I try to be classy, 
the more of a low-life bum I look, and I guess I’ll never 
learn any different.” 

Paul laughed and linked his arm in that of his em¬ 
ployer. “Rot,” he said consolingly, though he was glow¬ 
ingly aware of the glances cast upon him by beautiful 
women. “It’s all humbug. That ass who stopped to 
talk just now hasn’t a warm drop of blood in his veins 
however blue it may be. He’s a nabob because he has a 
title and a diplomatic post; but he has the soul of a 
remittance man. It’s no credit to me that I’m able to 
meet wasters like Lord Henry Shroton and women like 
his wife on their own terms. There’s not a man here 
whose friendship I should consider half as much a privi¬ 
lege as I consider yours. And to prove it, I’m going to 
avenge you. So far I’ve warded off their overtures on 


208 


SOLO 


your account. If they didn’t invite you, they couldn’t 
have me. But to-night I’ve a new idea. Lady Henry 
S. has asked me to call. Quite regardless of my estate. 
For that matter she wouldn’t be bothered with a crown 
prince who squinted. But she’s intrigued by your humble 
assistant’s ‘dark hair and lovesome mien.’ Eh hen, mon 
vieux, I’ll grace her bally tea table! She’s the thin end 
of the wedge. Before I’m through with her, his lord- 
ship will have dropped a potent word in the ear of that 
climbing draper man, Markwick, and if Markwick, via 
Lord Henry, via Lady ditto, via me, doesn’t send you a 
thumping order, then I’ll forfeit my salary for the next 
six months. We’ll make them pay through the nose for 
their snubs. I’m no hand at sticking up posters in the 
bazaars; that’s American publicity, and your pidgin. I’m 
beginning to see the English idea of business through 
connexions. We’re Jack Spratt and his wife—and 
betwixt us both, by God, we’ll lick the platter 

Pat’s imagination was kindled, and his eyes flashed 
nervously. “Listen here, sonny,” he said. “If you can 
land a thousand-pound order from Markwick’s as a 
starter, I’ll make you a partner.” 

“Pooh—a paltry thousand! I thought you thought 

big /” 

Pat looked dubious. “Markwick’s the kind of a mean 
son-of-a-gun who’d look in your mouth to see if your 
back teeth were filled with zinc. He’s conservative and 
has always done his buying in England, like his old man 
before him.” 

“Mrs. Markwick would give an eye-tooth, though, to 
be invited to one of Lady Henry’s crushes.” 

Pat stared. “I don’t get you. Are you going to make 
love to her too?” 

“God for fend! Besides I cant tackle her diiect, for 
she wouldn’t even condescend to put up her lorgnette to 


SOLO 


209 


look at me. Being a mere bourgeoise she has to be par< 
ticular whom she knows.” 

“Then how the devil-” 

“But when she finds out that I have the entree to 
Lady Henry’s-” 

“How did you get the entree?” 

“Just because I didn’t seem to want it—as I didn’t.” 

Pat was exasperated, as well as bewildered, and Paul 
explained. “This afternoon I dropped into the Savoy. 
The Shrotons were there with some people who were 
on their way inland to shoot big game. One of the 
ladies noticed me, and by and by old Henry strolled over. 
Wouldn’t I come and be presented to his wife? So I 
had to. She asked me a few test questions. Did I shoot ? 
Did I play polo? What did I think of the new American 
dances? Then somebody wondered what the orchestra 
were playing, and I said they had all but given the coup 
de grace to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony.” 

“Unfinished?” 

“Yes, it’s all right. Don’t interrupt. Lady Henry— 
Cora, as they call her—at this sign of intelligence on my 
part, felt justified in having picked me up, and said, T 
suppose you are very musical, Mr. Minas; you look 
musical; do you play the piano ?’ ” 

“Do you?” 

“Naturally.” 

“Well, I’m damned!” 

“So she asked if I’d play for her some day; she adored 
music—‘really good music.’ That’s what they all say.” 

“But whoa your horses. That’s a long ways from 
Markwick’s order.” 

“Not nearly so long as you imagine. You didn’t see 
Cora’s eyelids when she said I looked musical.” 

“Murder!” 

They had made their way back to the hotel. Another 
idea had leapt into Paul’s head. 



210 


SOLO 


“What a pity you’re so happily engaged to be married,” 
he threw out, with a feeling of guilt at the insincerity of 
the remark. 

“Why?” 

“Because Lucia and Beatrice and Ivy Markwick have 
all to go off. Lucia’s overdue.” 

“There’s your chance, then,” said Pat irritably. “You 
once told me you were an adventurer.” 

“I am, but a most quixotic one, and young women 
aren’t my game just now.” 

“What the devil is your game?” 

“My game is rushing into places where even you fear 
to tread, old fellow, and rushing in to get bacon for 
you.” 

“God knows I don’t want Lucia Markwick.” 

“Nor Beatrice, nor yet Ivy,” asserted Paul. “I merely 
said, what a pity you’re so happily engaged.” 

“I didn’t like the way you said it.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

Patrick was still ruffled when Paul accepted an offer 
of whisky and soda in his rooms, where they were rap¬ 
turously received by the imprisoned Aida. 

“You don’t approve of Mademoiselle,” Pat ventured 
bluntly. 

Paul weighed the answer. “I approve of her as a 
shrewd little Armenian.” 

“But not as my future wife? I thought you didn’t 
believe in drawing the line between nationalities. 

“It’s a question not of nationality but of personal 
quality. An ambitious man has to make his way in 
society as well as in business, and society judges him 
through the front his wife is able to put up. Would 
Mademoiselle feel at home at a reception given, say, by 
the American Consul-General? And could Mrs. Consul- 
General invite your in-laws?” Paul felt the thrusts cruel 
and found a way to mitigate them. “My attitude may 


SOLO 


211 


be influenced by the fact that Mademoiselle distrusts 
me.” 

“What makes you think so?” 

“Well, she does, Pat—as you must know. If it weren’t 
so damned nosy of me, I’d ask you to make a compact.” 

Pat waited. 

“That you refrain from making any definite arrange¬ 
ments towards getting married till I prove Mademoiselle’s 
distrust of my capacities unfounded. Give me time to 
do that, then I’ll have a better right to butt into your 
private affairs.” 

Pat reflected deeply. His irritability had gone, and a 
depression quite foreign to him taken its place. “Done!” 
he finally surprised Paul by announcing. 

As Paul was leaving the room, Pat made a further 
admission. “I’ve been awful lonesome in this burg.” 
Then with a whimsical, lugubrious humour he added, “I 
had to propose to somebody, didn’t I?” 

Paul just prevented himself from saying, “And 
Mademoiselle saw to it that she was the somebody.” 
He waited silently for more, and Pat, holding open the 
door, went on: 

“Do you think you can stay in with that crowd?” 

“The Shrotons? I have no such intention. From 
them I’m going on to the really useful nabobs—the 
commercial ones—the Jews and the Beys and the 
Pashas.” 

“How for the love of Mike?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“It’s easier said than done, believe me!” 

“Of course—otherwise it wouldn’t be worth attempt¬ 
ing.” 

“You’re ambitious too.” 

“In a quixotic way.” 

“Listen here, sonny, do you realize what makin’ up to 
frivolous women involves?’ 


212 


SOLO 


Flippancy, Paul felt, was what his friend needed to 
bring him out of his despondency. “A sailor doesn’t 
set a very high value on his virtue,” he laughed. 

Pat, he knew, did—but Paul could respect a point of 
view he didn’t share. 

“Well, I don’t want to cramp your style any—only 
don’t get yourself talked about.” 

“That—from you! What about your antics, the topic 
of the town!” 

“It’s a different kind of antics and a different kind of 
talk, see. My reputation’s A-one.” 

Paul was tickled at the literalness of Pat’s interpreta¬ 
tions. “I promise that the firm won’t get into bad odour 
through me,” he said. 

“Don’t go losing your head, then.” 

“Nor my heart nor my money—at bridge. I’ll try to 
make on all three scores: head, heart, and pocket. You’ll 
see.” 

At last Pat rallied, and suddenly laughed. “Doggone, 
I half believe you,” he confessed. 

“I should hope you did! This time next year you and 
Aida will be dashing around in a shiny car, fairly smelling 
the poor people.” 

“It’ll be a partnership car.” 

“I’ve told you I’m not out for a partnership.” 

“What the devil are you out for?” 

“I don’t quite know. Certainly you wouldn’t under¬ 
stand if I tried to tell you—even though you are a ro¬ 
mantic Irishman.” 

“Then good night, and to hell with you,” growled 
Patrick. 

“Ditto to that,” said Paul. “May I take Aida to bed 
with me to-night?” 

“No, you got a damn sight too many Fraus as it is,” 
and the door closed with a snap. 

In his own room Paul recalled the old Viennese quan- 


SOLO 


213 


dary: his eternal suspense between a romantic and real¬ 
istic attitude toward life. For the moment, he mused, 
he was pursuing a quixotic goal, making his way towards 
it by an avenue paved with solid realities. 

An air from the fortune-telling scene in the evening’s 
opera came into his head, and as he undressed he softly 
hummed it: 

“Et maintencmt, paries mes belles; de I’avenir donnez- 
nons des nouvelles. Dites-nous qui nous trahira; dites- 
nous qui nous aimera .” 

He was buoyed up with youthful confidence. Why 
consult cards to ascertain who would fall in love with 
one, and who betray? Every creature was a potential 
lover and a potential traitor. One had only to inspire 
the love and forestall the treachery as the case might 
require. An unfair game? Not unless one deliberately 
cheated. There were well-recognized rules, with a certain 
margin allowed for insidious graces. Besides, if the 
end were a good end, one gave oneself the benefit of the 
doubt where means were concerned. Paul was convinced 
that the end, in this case—which consisted in helping to 
solidify the welfare of a man who had gone out of his 
way to rescue him—was an end worth attaining by any 
means at his disposal. 

In bed the music of the card scene kept running in his 
head: 

(c Dans le lime d’en haut si ta page est heureuse, mele 
et coupe sans peur; la carte sous tes doigts se tournera 
joyeuse t t’ annongant le bonheur. 

“Mais si tu dois mourir, si le mot redoutable est ecrit 
par le sort, recommence vingt fois, la carte impitoyable 
repdtera la mort. y9 

It was grim. Now that the lights were turned out 
and the resplendent dress suit put aside, he felt less san¬ 
guine. What could a single man’s fanciful darts avail 
against the stone walls of worldliness! And when that 


214 


SOLO 


man was—of all the indeterminate men in the world— 
Paul Minas! 

Metis si tu dois mourir —why should that phrase come 
back again and again, with its accompaniment of solemn, 
muffled chords! 

He thrust it from him and snuggled his head on the 
pillow. After all, everything was on the cards. Let them 
reveal what they might. If one was doomed, one was 
doomed. 

4 

It took Paul three months to break down the Mark- 
wick defences. The period was a nerve-racking one, for 
apart from the delicacy of the negotiations he had to 
breast the undercurrent of Mademoiselle’s enmity and 
keep reassuring Pat that the time he spent out of the 
office was not being dissipated. To catch glimpses of his 
salesman, elegantly garbed, setting out for gymkhanas, 
or to hear from his lips chit-chat brought back from 
clubs and drawing-rooms, was a drastic test of Pat’s 
faith. A tension marked their relationship until the letter 
arrived containing a big order from the refractory mer¬ 
chant. Paul stood with his hands on Patrick’s shoulders 
while they read it through to the paragraph which ran: 
“If you can deliver the above in satisfactory condition 
by May fifteenth, at the latest, we shall be pleased to 
confer with your representative regarding orders for 
autumn and winter stock.” 

“Well?” inquired Paul, with suppressed triumph. 

Pat rose with a smile of relief. “Congratulations!” 
he said. “You put it over great. How you done it I 
don’t know.” 

“But I did” said Paul, like a child claiming full credit 
for having been good. 

“What’s the next move?” 

“Alexandria,” Paul unexpectedly announced. 


SOLO 


215 


“Why, have you cleaned out Cairo already ?” 

“By no means. But there’s a conclave in Alexandria 
next week, and I’ve scared up some useful letters of 
introduction. And incidentally some cotton tips.” 

A little piqued, he decided not to explain his plans in 
detail. But he was amply avenged three weeks later 
when he was able to walk into the office with a bunch of 
contracts which surpassed the total orders obtained by 
his three predecessors. Pat was won over. “Say, 
sonny,” he concluded, “I guess I got to hand it to you 
this time.” 

Thereafter Paul decided to forego a regular salary 
that he might, feel free to absent himself from the office 
whenever the mood seized him. Its atmosphere was be¬ 
coming distasteful. His first success had made Made¬ 
moiselle realize the necessity of changing her tactics. 
Distrustful glances had given place to glances of a pro¬ 
pitiatory nature, and her smiles had grown more disarm¬ 
ingly naive. On one occasion, when Paul had driven a 
splinter into his finger whilst helping to open a packing 
case, she had held his hand in hers far longer than neces¬ 
sary. And to add to his disgust, he knew Pat had 
observed her. 

For a year he solicited orders in his own devious ways. 
From time to time he journeyed up the river, often as 
a guest, and disregarded no opportunity to foregather 
with influential groups. For the first time in his life he 
was playing a definite social game, and, while he chafed 
at its insincerity, he found it instructive. 

Although it was a game of blandishments, it required 
pertinacity. Along with the diversion, there was a vast 
amount of annoyance and boredom. He played the 
game within the rules of his own standards of honour, 
even though it involved occasional intrigues which vio¬ 
lated the tenets of a strict morality. Conventional 
morality, he concluded, was an ideal beyond the attain- 



216 


SOLO 


ment of the most conventional of men. Certainly he 
had met no perfect exemplar of it. Compared with the 
illicit traffickings of those with whom he competed, his 
own intrigues seemed childlike and straightforward. His 
whole policy had been to obtain, for himself and his 
friend, as high a price as possible for whatever he could 
persuade people they needed. He studied the idiosyn¬ 
crasies and ambitions of utilizable men and women, then 
set about gratifying them; for which service he induced 
them to buy, or constrain their sycophants to buy, Patrick 
Coyle’s reputable commodities. 

During the second year of his association with Patrick 
Coyle, notwithstanding the impetus given to their activ¬ 
ities by the acquisition of a car and other tangible signs 
of prosperity, Paul found the social round growing irk¬ 
some. The exhilaration of being sought after by fashion¬ 
able hostesses gave place to ennui. The pleasure of 
knowing himself able to cut a dash gave place to disgust 
at the pettiness of dash-cutting. Wide acquaintanceship 
involved myriad obligations and drew his energies into 
silly channels. Fate had ordained for him a life of 
meditation, and he began to resent the daily incursions 
on his privacy. Not even in Vienna had his environ¬ 
ment been so cumbered with people. From a source of 
stimulation, the multitude became a source of confusion. 
He was losing sight of truth under the stress of play¬ 
acting, and only the determination to fulfil his compact 
kept him in his role. 

Whenever the babel became too insistent, he fled from 
the city, hired a donkey, ferried it across the river, and 
took refuge in the desert. There, after an hour’s riding, 
he would rest, and by yielding his soul over to the desert, 
which like the sea symbolized eternity, achieve a sense of 
his own puniness compensated by an exalted sense of re¬ 
lationship with the cosmic intelligence. Then his life, 
and all forms of life, took on the aspect of reflections 


SOLO 


217 


passing across the face of* a mirror; and he captured a 
sense of permanence in the thought that the reflections 
were inextricably related to some vague source which, 
like a spiritual sun, was responsible for their projection. 

After excursions of this sort he came back with re¬ 
newed energy and a clarified focus. But more exhaustive 
analyses of the social amalgam revealed hitherto unsus¬ 
pected proportions of hypocrisy, and as the months went 
on he found it necessary to inoculate himself with cor¬ 
respondingly increased doses of cynical wisdom. His 
contempt for worldliness grew with his skill in handling 
the world’s weapons. He became taciturn. With Pat 
alone could he throw off restraint, and from time to 
time let himself be borne along by the American’s in¬ 
fallible common sense, just as in days gone by, he had 
ridden on Otto’s broad shoulders. 

As in the case of his other quixotic tilts with the world, 
he had had to face disillusionment. It had been unrea¬ 
sonable to assume that Pat would rise superbly to the 
openings he was able to make for him, yet he could not 
deny that Pat’s matter-of-factness was discouraging. 
Imagination of a kind Pat had in abundance, but he 
was not given to ascending pinnacles for the sake of 
picturesque views. He was a true friend and a staunch 
bargainer, but not an artist; and Paul, in spite of himself, 
exacted of his friends that they should be artists. 
Vaguely he had expected that Pat would develop under 
his guidance, and acquire some of his own sublime dis¬ 
dain for the world, as his business waxed. Instead of 
which Pat’s respect for the world increased with his 
deposits in the bank. 

But Paul played on, for lack of grander games. His 
nomadic nature had begun to reassert itself, goaded by 
a conscience which reminded him that he was neglecting 
the deep, unknown message he had been put into the 
universe to deliver. 



218 


SOLO 


Once more he buried himself in wise books; once more 
he delved into his mind for some clue to his mission. 
Solitary trips to the desert became more frequent; and 
every day he sought poise and direction by suspending 
all thought for a half-hour in a sort of waking trance— 
a trick he had learned, after long practice, through con¬ 
tact with the followers of adepts in ancient religions. 

For some months his only definite aim had been to 
make his friend see, by subtle contrasts, the unwisdom 
of linking himself irrevocably to the Armenian “dactylo.” 
After a good deal of scheming, he had introduced Pat 
into the houses of most of the people whom it was to 
Pat’s advantage to cultivate. In these houses Pat had 
dined and danced with English, American and French 
girls with whom he must inevitably have compared his 
clever but unpresentable little fiancee. The subject of 
his marriage was never discussed, but Paul had intuitively 
known that the plans were not going forward smoothly. 

Then one day he arrived at the office to find Pat bear¬ 
ing the brunt of a stormy scene. Mademoiselle was 
sitting pale, hard-eyed, silent, unhappy, while Pat, in his 
most unbridled American, parried thrusts levelled at him 
in broken English by Mademoiselle’s exasperated father 
and brother and uncle—an unappetizing crew. 

Paul withdrew hastily to the domain of Abdul and the 
Sudanese porters, but remained in the building until he 
heard the angry visitors descending the stairs. To his 
surprise Mademoiselle followed them. In her little black 
dress and coquettish high-heeled slippers, she looked 
old and defeated. Paul pitied her, but still resented her 
hold over his friend. Except for the hat she wore, she 
might have been mistaken for a venturesome Turkish 
woman abroad without a veil. The flabby white skin, 
the coal-black brows setting off her unpleasantly large 
eyes, the childlike steps and bearing, were suggestive of 
a harem. 


SOLO 


219 

Paul hurried back to the office. Pat was standing by 
the swivel chair, his hands in his pockets, gloomy and 
disgusted. Aida looked towards the intruder for an 
explanation. 

“The bastards!” exclaimed Patrick finally. 

“What did they want?” 

“Want! They had the nerve to try and bone me for 
more money, on account of postponing the wedding - ” 

“More?” 

Pat paced the floor. “You see I had to pay the old 
son-of-a-gun a lump sum, to get his consent in the first 
place.” 

Paul refrained from exclaiming that the old man ought 
to have been glad to subsidize the marriage. He was 
reputed to be well off. 

“Did you pay up?’’ 

“Not on your tin-type. They tried bluffin’, threatened 
to sue me.” 

“And Mademoiselle?” 

Pat came to a halt, his blue eyes blazing with indig¬ 
nation. “Would you believe it, Paul, she stuck up for 
'em—for them mangy sons-o'-bitches! She wouldn't 
actually accuse me of wanting to get out of it, see, but 
she backed 'em up by noddin’ her head—like a frightened 
kid. That’s what finished me.” 

“Finished?” 

“Finished! I gave her a month’s salary on the spot 
and fired her. To hell with 'em.” 



IX 


I 

One mild fragrant evening in April, Paul was seated 
on the terrace of Shepheard’s making idle talk with an 
army officer. At the wicker tables were groups of men 
in regimentals and women in flimsy frocks. The Satur¬ 
day night dance was enlivened by the presence of two 
hundred Americans who had arrived the previous day 
from Alexandria, one of the principal stops in a superbly 
vulgar “Mediterannean cruise.” 

Whilst the dining-rooms were being cleared for 
dancing, the terrace overflowed with tourists comparing 
notes on their impressions of the pyramids and the price 
of amber. Paul and his friend exchanged smiles at in¬ 
congruous remarks which floated toward them in eager, 
transatlantic tones. “Well, what is the caliph?” inquired 
one dauntless debutante. “Darned if / know. Besides 
I despise tombs. Gee! I can hardly wait till to-morrow 
to see the snaps; I know I looked like I’d been shot at 
and missed.” 

From another direction came less flippant sentiments, 
voiced by a dowager out of the west. “Our dragoman’s 
name was Moses,” she was saying. “The poor fellah, 
I felt s’ sorry for him. His dotter died only yesterday 
and he told me about the funeral. It was something 
pitiful. He showed us where she was buried and all, 
and you should have seen that poor man’s eyes! We 
all gave him a little extra. I s’pose it was silly, but you 
just couldn’t help it/’ 


220 


SOLO 


221 


Paul listened with lazy amusement, when suddenly his 
friend touched his arm and exclaimed: 

“Gad, there’s a stunner!” 

Paul looked towards the door and saw a slender young 
woman of twenty-three or four daringly gowned in pale 
orange and deep daffodil hued velvets and tulles. Her 
arms were bare. A long row of pearls gave employment 
to one over-manicured hand, while the other held a fan 
of yellow feathers and tortoise-shell which reached nearly 
to the ground. There was a specious sheen from the 
waves of her hair to the slippers that peeked from under 
trailing draperies. She was not beautiful, but there was 
a glint of pert humour in her wide eyes and tilted nose, 
a hint of generosity in her mouth, a self-assurance in her 
carriage that gave her a striking attractiveness. She had, 
in an amazing degree, the faculty of making other 
women appear dowdy, and it was obvious to Paul that 
she was boycotted. This was partly explained by the 
presence at her side of a fat, gouty-looking German- 
American Jew whose pearl shirt-stud and expensive cigar, 
while super-excellent of their kind, seemed to add vague 
injury to his companion’s vague insult. 

The young woman glanced nonchalantly but deliber¬ 
ately at the tables, and then turned toward the door 
again, displaying a low-cut bodice which created a silence 
on the terrace—half shocked, half admiring. She struck 
Paul as being splendidly but a little pathetically isolated; 
splendid, because she was so incongruously harmless. 
He was sure of that. He knew that type of face—it was 
the face of a “damn good sport.” He seemed almost to 
know that particular face; it aroused some vague recol¬ 
lection. At any rate he meant to see it again, at closer 
range. He was all the more interested in her on account 
of the boycott; he entertained a perverse partiality for 
people who were snubbed. 

Before the young woman disappeared through the 



222 


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doorway, Paul had time to notice that all the men, English 
as well as American, had rejoiced in the sight of her 
whether they were willing to admit it or not. Two 
young Americans of a pattern which he supposed to be 
“Yale” or “Harvard” had covertly watched her, and he 
guessed that their mothers and sisters alone had re¬ 
strained them from flocking about her on the cruise.. 

He became restless, and found an excuse for leaving 
the terrace. Inside he searched the corridors. The vague 
recollection was growing insistent. In the inner lounge 
he caught a glimpse of her and advanced. She and her 
companion had found chairs in the centre of the 
room. 

Her wide blue eyes rested on him just as she had 
finished adjusting a scarf of tulle. The pertness disap¬ 
peared from her expression, which changed to a puzzled 
stare. Then her lips parted slightly, and her hands 
strayed tentatively outward. 

Recognition was simultaneous. Paul stepped forward 
with an exclamation of delight and, without a thought 
for the scores of onlookers, took her violently into his 
arms as she sprang up from the seat. 

“Paul Minas!” she cried, holding him off for a better 
view. 

“Gritty! As I live and breathe!” 

She glanced up and down for joy, with a return of 
the old tomboy spontaneity. 

“Why Paul, you great big huge man! I’ve never been 
so floored in all my life.” 

“Nor I. Good Lord, old Gritty! Who would have 
believed it?” 

“I know—in Egyp’—and everything!” 

“Tell me all about it this instant!” 

Gritty’s companion was languidly interested. She 
turned to him and said: “Joe, I’ve discovered a long- 
lost cousin.” Her eyes threw Paul a glance which he 


SOLO 


223 


took as a signal to observe the cousinship, and he ad¬ 
vanced to be introduced to Mr. Krauss. 

When Paul looked at Gritty again, his eyes told her 
that he accepted the situation as unquestioningly as Mr. 
Krauss had accepted the “cousin/’ but that he" would not 
be answerable for his private conclusions. Gritty covered 
the awkwardness with a frank, ringing laugh. 

“We can’t talk here/’ said Paul. “Let’s find a sitting- 
room.” 

He included Mr. Krauss in the invitation, and the three 
moved off, Gritty hanging on Paul’s arm with an eager¬ 
ness that warmed his heart. 

In a deserted corner the trio found chairs. Mr. 
Krauss ordered drinks and offered Paul a cigar. As 
briefly and sketchily as possible, Paul satisfied Gritty’s 
curiosity as to his activities during the last twelve years, 
then demanded an account from her. 

“But I don’t even know where to begin!” she ex¬ 
claimed. 

“Begin at Hale’s Turning. When did you leave?” 

“As soon as I was able to bully my folks into letting 
me go to Boston.” 

“What did you do there?” 

“Made cocoa and dusted the mantlepiece every day for 
a cousin of Ma’s who kept telling me what things were 
like when she was a little girl. Gee! They were terrible! 
Then I went out and got a job in a dry-goods store— 
cash-girl, Cash! Cash! And was never around when 
they wanted me!” 

“Then what?” 

“Ran away to New York.” 

“Why?” 

“I was lured there, dearie.” She peeked up at him 
and laughed. 

“And then?” 

“I worked for a dressmaker who made clothes for a 



224 


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actress who got me a job in the chorus of a musical show 
that was playing in a great big theatre, and that s the 
house that Jack built—this is Jack!” She pointed to 
Krauss. “He’s what you Call a magnate, he is. Wouldn’t 
you adore being a magnate, Paul, with a profile like 
that?” Gritty let the tip of her finger alight upon the 
older man’s waistcoat. 

“And then?” 

Gritty drew back with simulated ladylikeness. . My 
darling,” she reproved, “I can’t tell you everything; I 
don’t know you well enough.” 

Paul laughed. “To make a long story short, then?” 

“Well, after many vicissitudes, as the story-books say 
—vicissitude upon vicissitude—I got a really-truly part, 
and then bigger parts—and one fine day Joe Krauss here, 
who runs a dozen theatres—by the way, it was me that 
taught him not to say theayter; Pm bringing him up that 
genteel !—what was I saying? Oh yes, Joe, he decided 
that my light didn’t ought to be under a bushel any 
longer, so he blazed it out into the middle of Broadway 
—bingo!—and there you are!” 

Paul was duly impressed. “But Cairo is a long way 
from Broadway,” he finally commented. 

She explained that Krauss had been ordered abroad 
for his health, and she had come along to nurse him. 

“A most resplendent nurse!” Paul commented with a 
significant smile. 

“If I knew what you meant,” rebuked Gritty, “I’d 
leave the room!” 

There was much to talk about, but both felt constrained 
in the presence of the silent, ailing Jew, and Paul decided 
to postpone further questions. The dancing had com¬ 
menced, and Gritty’s head was keeping time to the distant 
strains. 

“Come along,” Paul invited. “You’ll excuse us if we 
dance won’t you, Mr. Krauss?” 


SOLO 


225 


“Go ahead, go ahead—don’t mind me. I think I’ll go 
up to bed. Order what you want and put it on my 
bill.” 

Paul bristled, but Gritty seemed not to notice the man’s 
crudeness. She left Krauss at the door of the lift and 
accompanied Paul to the ball-room. 

“Oh, Paul!” she squealed. “Isn’t it the most exciting 
old world that ever was!” 

He patted her arm and made a passage for her through 
the throng. He remembered the day when Gritty would 
have elbowed a way through for him. In the doorway 
he met Pat, recently returned from a much-needed vaca¬ 
tion in Luxor, and introduced him as his “boss.” Gritty 
granted the astonished and delighted Irishman the “dance 
after next.” 

Public interest in Gritty had been enhanced by the 
scene in the lounge, and Paul suddenly realized that he 
was dancing with a woman whose name must be well 
known in the theatrical world, a woman, moreover, who, 
knowing she would be recognized, had been defiant 
enough of public opinion to travel abroad with her man¬ 
ager. How like Gritty! The same old tomboy at heart. 
Now he understood the boycott, and chuckled. He 
thought of some exclusive functions that were to be held 
within the next few days, and resolved to take Gritty 
to them. What a pat gesture for his farewell to Cairo! 
He revolved his plans quite in the spirit in which he 
and Gritty, twelve years previously, had waggled their 
fingers at the parson’s back. 

He had never danced with a woman who moved so 
easily. Her body was compact and flexible, like a sheet 
of steel. She was obviously a professional dancer, and 
he thrilled at his privilege. Here and there he caught 
faintly derisive glances from ladies of his acquaintance 
who would never have bared their own backs. 

To punish them and to punish the transatlantic 




226 


SOLO 


dowagers who were at a loss to find partners for their 
“dotters,” the dowagers who had boycotted Gritty on the 
boat but were ready to squander pity and piastres on 
syphilitic dragomans snivelling about fictitious bereave¬ 
ments; to teach the lesson to them and to the college 
youths who had not dared to cut their apron-strings, 
Paul collected three or four officers in especially ornate 
uniforms and an Earl, Freddy, a nephew of Henry 
Shroton, and brought them to Gritty’s side, while the 
pretty little American debutantes looked on. 

Gritty was transformed from the mannequin who had 
stood on the terrace into an agile doll. She radiated 
jollity. When Paul presented the bashful Freddy—with 
pompous emphasis on his title—Gritty clapped a hand to 
her forehead and exclaimed in mock dismay, “My God!” 
Then she extended her hand. “Shake on it, old top. I 
been dying to know a honest-to-God nobleman all my 
life but never have, not one. I was afraid they’d be ter¬ 
ribly up-stage!” Gritty smiled with an odd grimace, her 
frank eyes fixed on the young man as if to sympathize 
with him for the embarrassment she was causing him. 

“At least,” he stammered good-naturedly, “I’m glad 
I’m not that, whatever it is!” 

“Oh, you’re just too sweet for words,” she assured 
him. “I hope to goodness you’re going to ask me to 
dance, for I just gotta make a entry in my diary—April 
ioth: rode on a camel and danced with a Earl!” 

The others pressed nearer, and the youth, overcoming 
his shyness in the friendly throng, ventured a further 
suggestion. “What about another entry, on April nth 
or 12th: had luncheon with Freddy?” 

“Mercy, no!” exclaimed Gritty. “My diary would 
never stand for such goings on as that!” And the others 
slapped the discomfited Freddy on the back and laughed 
as heartily as though Gritty had told a naughty story. 

Suddenly Paul looked over his shoulder. He had 


SOLO 


227 


heard a precise little voice say, “No, I’m afraid I don’t!” 
He caught in it a hint of adverse criticism directed against 
the new-comer who had taken the army under her wing, 
and who at this moment was saying, “Hey, don’t bother 
me, can’t you see I’m talkin’ to a Earl!” The precise 
little voice had belonged to Beatie Markwick and she was 
skilfully steering Pat Coyle away from the American 
Circe. 

“Qa colie!” said Paul to himself exultantly. “Ca 
colle!” Pat’s future was in safe hands. 

2 

Gritty Kestrell exemplified an attitude towards life 
which compelled Paul’s admiration. At sea he had lived 
amongst men for whom morality was a mere question 
of lack of opportunity. In Vienna he had rubbed should¬ 
ers with Bohemians whose conventionality consisted in 
conscientiously damning morality. In Cairo men and 
women wore their morality in public as Moslem women 
wore veils. As for Gritty she seemed sublimely and re¬ 
freshingly immune from moral cares. She could be 
dainty and she could be gross. Her acts were the reflex 
expression of whatever urge happened to be in the ascen¬ 
dancy. The subtle standard of expediency that served 
most women in lieu of a code formed a quite negligible 
part of her impedimenta. She had apparently come to 
the conclusion that honesty was the best policy, and she 
had the strength of character without which an honest 
policy is suicidal. She was immoral, but not frail. 

If Gritty had glossed over certain phaseo of her career 
on the first evening of her reunion with Paul, she made 
no bones of it during the pleasant days that followed. 
She accepted the superficial philosophy summed up by the 
heroine of a smart play she had seen: “A girl is not a 
sinner just because she’s not a saint.” But for that mat- 


228 


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ter, if you had conclusively proved to Gritty that she was 
a sinner, she would merely have smiled with one of her 
odd grimaces, levelled her eyes at you, and said, “Well, 
dearie, what you going to do about it?” Womanhood 
had put a fine edge on her juvenile heartiness and it was 
the contrast that gave her her most piquant charm. She 
was too tender to be diabolic; too vulgar to be elvish; 
but her quality was both mischievous and elusive. She 
was a pagan, and a “fetching” one. 

Out of regard for her companion’s health, Gritty had 
foregone the sight-seeing trips arranged by Cook’s man 
for two hundred “cruisers,” as she called them, and had 
taken rooms at the Mena House, far away from the 
noisy city. There Paul found the pair on the eve of 
their departure to join the holiday ship, which was re¬ 
turning to America by way of Greece and Italy. He 
was to spend the night in the hotel. 

“I just hate going,” Gritty wailed, when the tea- 
things were taken away. Through the open window of 
her sitting-room she and Paul were watching groups 
seated at tables on the lawn. In the road beyond, a 
straggling party of tourists, trying to look as though 
camels were their customary means of locomotion, were 
ascending the hill towards the pyramids. 

“I was plumb disgusted with those things,” Gritty 
rambled on, “when we first come out here. They were 
so bare and hard, and I’d always thought of ’em in con¬ 
nection with moonlight and palm trees and Oriental music 
off-stage, like in a Sothern and Marlowe production of 
Antony and Cleopatra. When we motored across the 
Nile on a steel bridge I darn near bawled—honest I did. 
Naturally I thought it was gonna be Nile-green, like my 
new neglige! I felt like I’d been had. I could no more 
picture Cleopatra glidin’ down that stream of cold tea 
than I could picture her crossin’ to Hoboken from Thirty- 
Fourth Street. But since then the whole place’s kind of 


SOLO 


229 


got me—an’ now I know we’re going I’m sorry. You 
can’t help but feel leery to think that, when you have 
been planted as long as Cleopatra has, people will still be 
trapesing up that doggone hill to stare and wonder. Joe 
says it’s mental cruelty to bring a invalid out here and 
put him in a room overlookin’ tombstones. His dad 
wasn’t a undertaker like mine. Joe just hates the flesh- 
pots of Egyp’. He can’t get used to not being in his 
office with people runnin’ in to tell him the star’s drunk 
and the theatre’s on fire. It was killing him, but he’s 
crazy to get back. Gee, life’s funny!” 

Paul had watched Gritty’s change of mood during the 
past ten days, and was pleased to discover her capacity 
for being chastened by a grandeur of which she had 
only the dimmest conception. 

“I’m glad you like it,” he said. “Have you been out 
there at night—by moonlight?” He pointed towards the 
eastern horizon. 

Gritty looked up with an eager appeal in her eyes. 
“No, will you take me—to-night—my last night here?” 

“Will Mr. Krauss let you come?” 

“This is the twentieth century, darling—A.D.—not 
B.C., and I’m me own boss.” 

They dined in Gritty’s sitting-room because Mr. Krauss 
was disinclined to dress. The privacy suited Paul, for 
Mr. Krauss had an inelegant way with a fork. Half¬ 
way through the meal a note was brought in for Miss 
Kestrell. Gritty read it in silence, borrowed a pencil 
from the waiter, scribbled a reply, got up to fetch an 
envelope, sealed the missive and sent it forth while Paul 
kept up a patter with his host. 

“Who was it from?” asked Mr. Krauss when the 
waiter had left the room. 

Gritty had returned to her food with the unconcern of 
a child. “From a very nice boy,” she replied, as if to 
close the discussion. 


230 


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“Another one?’’ Mr. Krauss seemed mildly amused. 

“No, the same. Eat your nice fish, darling. It’s rude 
to ask personal questions, isn’t it, Paul? Say yes.” 

“Yes. But I’d try to find out in other ways what I 
wished to know. Is it rude to wish to know ?” 

“Fierce and rude!” 

“What I’d like to know, if it wasn’t rude,” Paul teased, 
“is what you replied to the nice boy, also what Mr. 
Krauss would have said if it hadn’t been the same one 
but another.” 

Gritty dashed off at a new tangent. “Out here he only 
lets me have one at a time. Home he brings them to 
my dressing-room in legions and cohorts.” 

Paul looked up for an explanation, but none was forth¬ 
coming. “Oh, well,” he remarked. “There’s safety in 
numbers.” 

“Not where Gritty’s concerned,” interposed Mr. 
Krauss. 

“No,” she retorted, “but there’s money in numbers, 
and Joe Krauss engages us poor girls for what we can 
lure into the house. He’s got box-office morals.” 

“What kind have you?” Paul inquired. 

“None, thank God!” 

“You say it vindictively.” 

“I got a right to, dearie. If you only knew how I’d 
had morals drummed into me as a kid-.” She sud¬ 

denly remembered whom she was addressing. “But you 
do know!” 

“Don’t I just!” 

Gritty laughed and explained to Mr. Krauss. “Hale’s 
Turning, where me and Paul was born, is the home of 
the original moral germ. You’d never believe what a 
innocent, dear, sweet little lamb he was, Joe—Gee, when 
I think of him with his Eton collar and patent-leather 
hair heading the Lily Class at Sunday-school concerts! 
Lordy, what ages and ages ago it seems!” 



SOLO 


231 


“Do you remember the night we fled the wrath to 
come, Gritty—down the hill from the revival tent?” 

Gritty put down her knife and fork and burst into a 
fresh peal of laughter. “I’d clean forgot!” she cried, 
then gave the older man an account of her frustrated 
conversion. 

“After that we went on strike and refused to go to 
Sunday-school ever again,” she concluded. “Ma hasn’t 
got over it yet.” 

“The beginning of the end,” Mr. Krauss commented. 

“Don’t you believe it!” Paul corrected “Gritty’s end 
began the day she was born.” 

“It never did,” she defended, with an air of content¬ 
ment. “You made me what I am to-day, by preventing 
me from getting religion—and you know you did, you 
bad boy. Besides, the moon’s up and I gotta see the 
sphinx.” 

“What about the nice boy?” Paul inquired. 

“He minds his own business,” she threw back, as she 
went away to change her shoes. 

A few minutes later she returned, enveloped in a 
woolly cape. She made Mr. Krauss comfortable before 
the fire in his bedroom, then followed Paul downstairs. 

The night air had a nip in it and Gritty snuggled into 
the high collar of her cape, passing a hand through a 
slit to take Paul’s arm. They drew away from the hotel 
gate and walked up the long hill towards the desert, 
leaving the murmurs and lights of civilization to fade 
slowly into the distance. 

At the top of the hill, where the road spread out and 
lost itself in the desert, they paused. The first pyramid 
towered before them, one jagged angle palely silvered by 
the rising moon, the other side merged into a shadow that 
extended over acres of sand. Far away, on their left, 
were tiny points of light leading towards the distant 
city. On their right was an indigo wilderness of low hills 


232 


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and hollows, over which the moon cast a ghostly sheen. 

“It’s the very same moon,” whispered Gritty. “It 
thinks I’m Cleopatra and you’re Marc Antony.” 

Paul hummed Omar’s words: 

“Ah, moon of my delight that knows no wane, 

The moon of Heaven is rising once again. 

How oft hereafter rising shall she look 
Through this same garden, after me, in vain.” 

Gritty was holding his hand tightly. Finally she 
turned her back on the moon and pointed toward the 
empty horizon. “I want to go that way,” she said. 
She had forgotten the sphinx. 

They made their way over hubbies of rock and sand, 
skirting the edge of the black shadow cast by the pyramid, 
until they had left even the shadow behind. From time 
to time they paused to rest. Paul was thinking of Thais 
and Paphnuce. 

“It’s awful spooky,” Gritty whispered. “Aren’t you 
scared?” 

Paul shook his head. 

“I am—a little,” she confessed. 

Suddenly she withdrew her arm. “I’m going on alone 
to see how far I can get without dying of fright. I’ll 
hold up my arm when I want you to come and get me 
and you’ll see it against the sky. Do you remember the 
story Miss Hornby read us about Rumpelstilskin, the 
boy who knew no fear?” 

Paul tried to dissuade her, but she eluded him. 

“Don’t you dare budge,” she called back. 

For some time he stood, watching her figure get smaller 
and smaller. Once, when she descended a depression, he 
lost sight of it, but it reappeared on the next ridge. Then 
it vanished, and he waited, his nerves uncomfortably 
tense. 


SOLO 


233 


In the end he could not bear the suspense. There 
was nothing against which to press one’s back. He began 
to follow in her path, with anxious haste. Once he 
thought of calling out to her, to command her to stop, 
but he dreaded to hear his own voice reverberate through 
the silence. 

Then from a deep hollow he saw her form, a tiny 
blot against the sky. Her arms were raised, and he 
stumbled on towards her with relief, though still unable 
to dispel a clutching apprehension. He was afraid she 
could not make out his figure from the higher ground 
on which she was standing, and his fears redoubled when 
he saw her arms frantically waving. He paused to shout, 
but in the act of putting his hands to his mouth he caught 
a faint cry, and strained his ears. She was calling to 
him, and he sang out, in tones which had pierced through 
many a blast, “Coming!” 

Suddenly the little figure crumpled, and there was only 
a faint dark hump to indicate Gritty’s position. He 
hurried on, trying to fix his gaze on the point where he 
had seen her stand, afraid he might arrive to find the 
hump merely a boulder. His heart was pounding and 
his eyes smarted from the strain of peering into the 
darkness. 

Finally he caught sight of her, only a few yards away, 
huddled on the sand. He gave a shout and she looked 
up. 

“It’s a fizzle,” she said laconically. “I ain’t a bit 
scared.” 

“Gritty, you little madcap!” he scolded in tones that 
made him realize what a fright she had given him. He 
was trembling and perspiring. 

“I would of been scared if I hadn’t known you were 
there,” she complained. 

He was furious. “Well, I’ll see that you come alone 
next time.” 


234 


SOLO 


She caught his tone and rose to her feet. “Why, did 
you get scared ?” 

“Damn scared!” 

“Oh, goody-goody!” 

“Don’t be silly. Come on back” He took her hand 
and they turned toward the three monuments—now more 
than ever like sinister tents. For a long while they kept 
silence. Then Gritty said, with a sigh: 

“I’m glad I came, anyway.” 

Paul had regained control of himself. “Why?” 

“It was wonderful. Just the feeling of being alone, of 
going toward nothing—oh, of just being. Don’t you 
ever forget yourself and just be?” 

With a shock Paul realized that Gritty had intuitively 
attained experiences for which he had had to strive. In 
the sense that Gritty meant, he had never “just been.” 
He had come near it a few times at sea, and on the day 
when he had sat and watched his ship pass through the 
canal without him. But these occasions were acutely 
exceptional. As a rule his sensations were described to 
him by a watching and recording faculty whilst he was 
in the act of experiencing them, whereas Gritty, by virtue 
of some spontaneity of soul, untroubled by an analytic 
mind, “just was,” as a matter of course, a good portion 
of the time. He supposed it was part and parcel of her 
femininity, and said as much, to belittle her. But Gritty 
had already outlived her interest in the matter. 

“I’m tired now,” she plaintively announced. 

“You would be,” he retorted. 

“And cold,” she added, to reinforce her claim for sym¬ 
pathy. 

“And thirsty, no doubt,” he suggested 

“Yes.” 

“Well, you must have patience.” 

“But I don’t want to have patience.” 

“What do you want to have?” 


SOLO 


235 


She stopped. “A kiss, please, mister.” 

He gave it to her. “Now stop being perverse, or I’ll 
run away and leave you to just be to your heart’s con¬ 
tent.” 

She shuddered, and took a new grip of his arm. The 
mere threat intimidated her. 

Paul had food for thought during the rest of the 
journey. He could have roamed all over the desert alone 
without being afraid, because alone he could imagine him¬ 
self unhuman. In the desert with Gritty just beyond 
reach, he had been terror-stricken. On the other hand, 
Gritty, provided he were in the vicinity, could not ex¬ 
perience a fear she had courted, whereas alone she would 
have collapsed. He concluded that he was not as weak 
as he had been on the point of believing. 

When they reached the hotel the lounge was deserted, 
but voices came from the direction of the card and bil¬ 
liard-rooms. Paul gave an order for coffee and sand¬ 
wiches, and they sank into deep chairs. 

“Now play something,” Gritty begged. 

“It’s too late.” 

“But it’s my last night. I want to hear some nice 
Oriental music to complete everything. Why, I haven’t 
heard a bit since I been here. That’s another way I feel 
I been had. At Shepheard’s they played things like ‘Alex¬ 
ander’s Rag-time Band’—and it’s old at that!” 

Paul opened the piano. At least, he mused, if he 
couldn’t just be in the routine of life he could in terms 
of music. Left to himself he would have chosen music 
which would have conveyed very little emotion to Gritty 
Kestrell. But to-night Gritty must be humoured. He 
began to play a piece by Emile Blanchet: “Au Jar din du 
Vieux Serail.” 

“That’s it,” Gritty murmured, in response to the weird 
opening cadences, and she sank deeper into her arm¬ 
chair, tired and contented, as the music went on, muffled, 


236 


SOLO 


tranquil, melancholy, working up a strident climax, and 
falling away again, whimpering, sighing. It was as 
though some gorgeous pageant had passed beyond the 
garden walls, with a din of barbaric trappings. There 
was in it the sound of high-pitched, exotic flutes, and 
the monotonous thud of camels’ hoofs. 

“You’re a funny old dear,” Gritty acknowledged, by 
way of thanking him. 

Paul went on playing. The music attracted members 
of a bridge party Avho were dispersing for the evening. 
A tall, grey-haired woman in black velvet looked into the 
room, recognized Paul, and advanced slowly with a faint 
smile on her drooping lips. 

Without interrupting his performance, Paul bowed, 
and the intruder came trailing across the room. Then 
she caught sight of Gritty curled up like a kitten, one 
hand hanging limp over the arm of the chair, a filament 
of smoke rising from her cigarette. Paul watched from 
the tail of his eye. After a graceful, elaborate feint, the 
intruder turned to address a waiter who was bringing the 
laden tray. 

“Oh, waiter—I was just looking for my book. Have 
you seen it? It’s a green book.” 

The waiter searched in vain, and the lady slowly re¬ 
treated, saying that she might have left it upstairs after 
all. Paul went on playing. 

Cora, he reflected, had never “just been” in her life. 
She was doomed to go through life trying to be. And 
she was putting up such a good bluff, as Pat would say, 
that she could afford to contemn anomalies like Gritty. * 

When Lady Henry was out of earshot Gritty sent him 
a muted, tomboyish whistle between her teeth, and he 
turned to see her jerk a thumb toward the departing 
figure. 

“Who’s she?” 

“WhW” 


SOLO 


237 


f '‘Nothing—only she made a face like I smelt bad, the 
old trout!” 

“Don’t mind her, my dear. She can’t help sniffing at 
any woman who isn’t strictly guaranteed.” 

“I’ll bet she’s not so hostile toward men.” 

“No, with them she requires rather a different sort of 
guarantee.” 

“What sort?” 

“They must be warranted to say discreetly flattering 
things in public and make love to her in private, to put 
cushions under her feet, imply that she is young and 
fresh, instead of middle-aged and faded, amuse and bully 
her, compliment and insult her, and accept her manifold 
favours with grateful thanks.” 

“And do you pass the acid test?” 

“Now who’s asking personal questions?” 

Gritty watched him over the rim of her coffee-cup. In 
her regard there was a trace of maternal solicitude. 

“Why don’t you drop this game, Paul?” she finally 
said. “You’re a darn sight too good for it.” 

“What game?” 

“Oh, I’ve got eyes. Why do you let yourself be 
squabbled over by third-rate women?” 

Paul laughed at the vindictive sincerity of her tone. 
“I’m making excellent use of them.” 

“What do you get out of it?” 

“Introductions, market tips, food, drink, and miscel¬ 
laneous information.” 

“In return for?” 

“Carefully weighed and measured doles of my external 
personality.” 

“And what good does the information do you?” 

“The same kind of good that food does you when 
you’re hungry. I’ve always been a glutton for experi¬ 
ence, and experience is like Mohammed’s mountain.” 

Gritty was not satisfied, but her eyes had been drawn 


238 


SOLO 


toward the doorway again and an odd grimace came over 
her face. She glanced quickly at Paul and he turned 
to see a tall young man entering the room. It was the 
bashful Earl whom he had brought to Gritty on the night 
of the dance. 

“I guessed right about the nice boy,” Paul had time 
to whisper, before Freddy joined them. 

“But only half right,” she returned enigmatically. 

“I’m looking for a stray aunt,” Freddy said, covering 
his embarrassment with an inconsequential tone. “Have 
you seen one?” 

“She’s gone upstairs,” Paul informed him. “She was 
looking for a book, I believe—a green one.” 

“Why will they persist in reading green books?” said 
Freddy, to make talk. 

Gritty laughed. “Why, are green books bad for you 
here, too, then, like green vegetables?” 

A few minutes later Gritty rose. “I got to go tuck 
Joe in,” she said. “He wouldn’t sleep a wink unless I 
said good night.” 

She shook hands with Freddy, whose eyes dwelt on 
her with a strange sort of devotion. “It’s good-bye, 
now,” she said. “For I’m off in the morning. Good¬ 
bye and good luck.” 

Paul thought she was carrying the sham unnecessarily 
far, until he scrutinized Freddy’s face. Beneath the 
casual mask he detected unhappiness. Then he glanced 
at Gritty, as she ran up the stairs. Like all women, 
she had a way of springing surprises. 

Freddy lit a cigarette and came to the side of the piano. 
Something was troubling him. “I say, Minas,” he began 
anxiously, “I hope I didn’t intrude just now.” 

Paul turned back to the keyboard. He had been fum¬ 
bling over difficult passages in a Debussy prelude: “La 
lune descend sur le temple qui fut.” 

“I knew Gritty before she was old enough to have 


SOLO 


239 


freckles and throw stones/’ he explained. “We’re still 
children in each other’s eyes. So you haven’t intruded 
in any sense, I assure you.” 

Freddy sat down in the chair abandoned by Gritty. 

“She approves of you most emphatically, if it interests 
you to know,” Paul added. 

“Really?” Freddy’s face lit up. “She’s a splendid 
woman,” he testified, with an air of experience which, 
like his evening clothes, merely accentuated his boyish¬ 
ness. 

“Oh, Gritty’s a peach,” Paul agreed. 

“Peach! Peach? You people have an amazing vo¬ 
cabulary.” He got up and announced his intention of 
turning in. 

“Good-night,” said Paul, and smiled discreetly. 

Freddy gave him a sidelong glance, then shook his 
head. “Hasn’t she told you?” he asked. “I imagined, 
from what you said, that she had.” 

Paul was puzzled. “I’ve done a bit of guessing, that’s 
all. Rather nosey of me.” 

Freddy took a note from his pocket. “No harm to 
let you read this. Only shows what an ass I’ve been.” 

Paul hesitated, then took the note. 

“Poor Early-bird—that didn’t catch any worm,” he 
read. “It was horrid of me to tease you the other day 
at tea, and very bold of you to come back after you 
promised not to. Of course I like you a lot but don’t 
you see that’s just why I cant! Take my tip, Freddy 
dear, and don’t chase after girls like me. You’re such a 
pet, and it would spoil you. I mean it. 

G.K.” 

Paul handed back the note. He was ashamed of him¬ 
self for having misjudged Gritty’s intentions. 

“Were you hard hit?” he ventured to inquire. 


240 


SOLO 


Freddy’s boyishness fell away, and a wry smile crossed 
his face. “Well, as a matter of fact, I was, rather. 
Makes a man feel an infernal rotter to get a decent note 
like this after having assumed—well, you know.” 

Freddy had taken Gritty at her own easy valuation, 
and his superior worth had put her on her mettle. It 
had been a good lesson for both, Paul mused. 

“Splendid woman,” Freddy repeated, and said good¬ 
night. 

Suddenly Paul felt more poignantly alone than he had 
felt for years. Twice in the course of a few hours, 
Gritty Kestrell—that little baggage—had revealed quali¬ 
ties that chastened him. He thought of himself as a 
shell, stuffed with words, words, words, light as a 
meringue. 

The doors of the hotel had been fastened. He went 
to the switch and turned down the last lights, leaving the 
lounge in darkness except for the red reflection of the 
dying fire and the blue moonlight at the windows. He 
had an impulse to put on his top coat and wander back 
to the desert, to wait for sunrise. But as he walked 
to the windows his feet, against the sides of his shoes, 
ached in protest. 

Instinctively he moved toward the piano, and for the 
first time in years dropped into the tranquil rhythm of 
the old sonata he had played in Fremantle. As he played 
he was conscious of the phenomenon concerning which 
he had philosophized earlier in the evening: that a watch¬ 
ing faculty stood aloof and described his lonely mood for 
him, a faculty which there was no escaping. It told 
him his life was still aimless. The theme had not 
changed, but he had missed opportunities of developing 
it, had been content to luxuriate in mere tone-colour. 
Others went on year by year lending their voices to the 
great chorus, while his life remained a feeble solo, at 
times inaudible even to himself. On a few occasions, 


SOLO 


241 


when there had been a lull in the chorus and the world 
had held its breath, his solo had welled up clear, spon¬ 
taneous, full, until he had throbbed with the conviction 
that it dominated the universe. But almost immediately 
other voices had risen to drown it. 

Even the theme of the third movement of the old 
sonata—a theme he had once identified with his own 
ego—was only musically and poetically valid. At any 
rate valid only for a Beethoven, never for a Paul Minas. 

He closed the piano, went to sit by the fire, and lit a 
final cigarette. He thought of his haphazard acquaint¬ 
ances and what they were making of their lives. He 
wondered, once more, what would have become of him 
had he never run away to sea. Suddenly he yearned to 
see the village where he had lived as a child, yearned to 
revisit the old kitchen, the old playroom, and the fields 
where he and Gritty had looked for moss-beds they called 
“secrets.” In the firelight he recaptured the old sights 
and sounds, heard the skates clinking on his shoulder 
and voices echoing across the frosty marsh. He saw the 
cherry-tree white with snow, and again white with blos¬ 
soms. He heard Walter Dreer’s familiar whistle and 
felt his heart beat faster at its summons—a summons 
he couldn’t accept, because he had to practise. He saw 
Phoebe Meddar standing in the pale morning sun, ivory 
and gold and lavender, saw her stoop to pick up a bunch 
of tea-roses. And he yearned to see Phoebe again, the 
Phoebe whom Gritty had found—on one of her triumphal 
re-entries into Hale’s Turning—teaching school. For his 
idealization of Phoebe, Gritty had mocked him a little, 
but tenderly. “At least,” she had admitted, “Phoebe’s 
the only girl left in that God-forsaken hole with a nickel’s 
worth of brains.” 

Gritty had turned up as a sort of “distant” sister. She 
had shown a disposition to mother rather than flirt with 
him, which was as it should be. And now she was up- 


242 


SOLO 


stairs, perhaps a little lonely herself, whilst, a few doors 
away, Joe Krauss slept the sleep of the complaisant. In 
a few hours Gritty would be on her festive way, and 
Freddy, in white polo togs, would gallop back to the 
stern business of life! 

And somewhere overhead Cora, poor amateur 
courtesan, Cora who was almost lovely, almost brilliant, 
almost a lot of things, Cora whose life just perceptibly 
flatted, but whose timbre was quite above the average, 
Cora was sitting up in bed—perhaps reading a green 
book. Her door would open if he chose to knock—but 
he did not so choose. He had no more thresholds to cross 
in Egypt. 

He went direct to his room and sat on the window-sill 
watching the moon, as he had done one night four or five 
years before in a tiny farm cottage in California. As 
on that occasion his mind was tinged with memories of 
the village where he had spent his childhood. The time 
had come for the prodigal to return. 

His decision once taken, Paul set about making definite 
plans to bring this latest phase of his career to a close. 
Again he experienced the sensation of taking a new 
turning in a maze. Into his mind came an echo of a 
phrase long-forgotten: Aunt Verona’s sigh of “God, 
what a labyrinth, labyrinth, labyrinth!” He was grown¬ 
up now, and could say “God” as much as he chose. He 
could even find it in his heart to wish he had some one 
to place an occasional check on his weary licences, some 
one to hold up a finger and reproach him with a “Why, 
Paul Minas, if you say things like that I shall stop my 
ears!” That was what Beatie Markwick said to Pat, and 
Pat doted on it. 

Gritty, by flitting across his path like a golden moth, 
had roused him from one day-dream—a day-dream that 
had lasted now for two and a half years—and focused 
his attention on another: a day-dream whose setting was 


SOLO 


243 


the far-away village whence Gritty, like himself, had fled. 
He would go back to Hale’s Turning and pick up the 
threads left hanging there. The next movement in the 
unending symphony would be written over the first, but 
less naive, more experienced, ‘Tike the same person thir¬ 
teen years later.” 

Breaking the news to Pat was a painful ordeal. He 
could advance no reason but caprice for his impending 
desertion; for that matter caprice had prompted his ac¬ 
ceptance of Pat’s offer at the outset. And, although the 
Irishman could understand a sentimental desire to re¬ 
visit one’s native land, he could not understand Paul’s 
readiness “to throw up a sure thing” on such frivolous 
grounds as mere “fed-upness.” Pat began by arguing, 
and ended by preaching, his text being “Success, and 
what you must do to achieve it in this most practical of 
all possible worlds.” 

“We got a chance to make a wunnerful thing out o’ 
this here concern,” he concluded. “You’ve helped do the 
spade work, and if you don’t stay to help reap the harvest, 
why, you’re plumb crazy, son, that’s all I got to say.” 

Paul laughed, but with a nice regard for the affection 
that underlay Pat’s fulminations. “I told you in the be¬ 
ginning I was crazy,” he reminded his friend. “The 
word I used was 'quixotic/ but it amounts to the same 
thing.” 

Pat groaned. “Well, for the love of Mike stop bein’ 
it, while there’s still time.” 

Paul grew suddenly grave. The words called up out 
of the past an echo of some admonition made by Dr. 
Wilcove to Aunt Verona. Something about shirking the 
issues of life, and about giving life a trial before it was 
too late. He let the comparison drop, and Pat went on 
preaching. 

“Take a holiday if you like. Go home and see your 
folks, but come back and we’ll run the joint together— 


244 


SOLO 


see—we’ll double the staff and put it on a real money¬ 
making basis.” 

“Money bores me,” said Paul. 

Pat exploded. “Be a bloody pauper then—and to hell 
with you!” 

Paul sat staring into space. 

“I hate to let you be so doggone fat-headed,” Pat came 
back to the charge. “Gee, if I had your style, why I’d 
just about run Egypt. There ain’t a thing we couldn’t 
pull off here, if you stuck around. Where do you think 
you’ll finally get off at if you go on chuckin’ up chances 
like you been doin’ all your life? Why nowhere—that’s 
where it’ll be. It’s plain suicide.” 

“If life consists in wheedling orders out of tight-fisted 
merchants,” Paul proclaimed, with a return of his cynical 
humour, “then I prefer suicide. Failure is more interest¬ 
ing than success; for there’s only one way to succeed 
and there are a thousand picturesque ways of failing. 

. . . Besides, you have Beatie now. She’ll take my 
place.” 

Pat had an idea. “Listen here sonny,” he said, as 
though offering a bait that no sane man would resist. 
“Why don’t you stay and marry Ivy Markwick? Beatie 
and I were talking about it. Ivy’d jump at it.” 

“I don’t want to be jumped at,” retorted Paul with a 
trace of petulance. “Nor clung to.” 

Pat’s efforts were in vain, and a month later he drove 
Paul to the railway station in the shiny car. “Well, if 
you change your mind any,” said Pat in farewell, “just 
send me a cable.” 

Pat’s debonair bearing had given place to dejection. 
With a pang Paul realized that Pat’s attitude, ever since 
the moment he had warned him against the raw tomato, 
had been, however clumsily, protective. He would surely 
miss Pat’s remonstrances and rebukes, his prudence and 
indulgence, his thoughtful attentions, his brotherly coun- 


y 


SOLO 


245 


sel, his abusive banter, his honest gaucheries. Another 
phrase from the past came back to him. Life was a series 
of partial deaths; and as one grew older it would be 
less easy to create new enthusiasms to fill the gaps left 
by the demise of the old. 

In his ears was the solemn accompaniment to the 
fortune-telling scene of Carmen. 


PART IV 


247 



/ 




X 


I 

Paul was well provided with funds, but as a tribute 
to his abandoned avocation he resolved to work his 
way to America. Through his dealings with exporters 
in Alexandria he obtained, after a short period of 
waiting, a berth as substitute officer on an oil tank 
bound for New York. 

Thence, after calling on Gritty Kestrell, who was in 
the throes of rehearsals for Krauss’s summer produc¬ 
tion, he proceeded to Boston, crossed by boat to Yar¬ 
mouth, and made his way to Hale’s Turning in an ambling 
train whose old-fashioned lamps and yellow plush seats 
called forth a legion of forgotten associations. 

Schooners in muddy creeks, glimpses of the sparkling 
Bay of Fundy, white-washed wooden houses and red 
barns, trees heavy with green apples, stations with their 
quotas of staring, gaping, hard-voiced villagers and can¬ 
opied carriages, broad dusty roads shaded by maples, the 
compactness of the turf, the carpets of clover, daisies, 
buttercups and dandelions, the cobalt blue of the sky, the 
cotton-white of the clouds, the leisurely pastoral quality 
of the whole passing scene, caused him an exquisite 
pain. As he drew nearer to his destination—the squal¬ 
ling sticky-handed children, the smell of oranges!_his 

throat grew dry and he caught himself biting his nails 
in nervous agitation. He longed to see his home, could 
scarcely wait—yet dreaded it, dreaded it. He felt shy. 

249 


250 


SOLO 


It was the first of July, 1914—Dominion Day—and 
all along the road were signs of celebration. Houses 
were decorated with flags, families from outlying districts 
thronged the streets of the villages in festive attire. 
Paud had an indulgent smile for the cow-hide boots emerg¬ 
ing beneath muslin frocks, up in front and down at the 
back after the manner of soil-tilling women the world 
over. Kind-faced, shapeless mothers carried picnic 
baskets on their arms and solid unbrellas, and fat boys 
in duck knickers, with hat elastics under their chins, 
blew gaudy horns, sucking peppermint sticks between 
fanfares. 

Paul thought of the days when he awoke at dawn, 
excited at the prospect of marching in the First of July 
parade. He saw no sign of the “brownies” and burnt- 
cork “minstrels” who had been a conspicuous feature of 
former parades, and a lamentable modern touch was 
added by the prevalence of Ford motor-cars, of which 
the world had been innocent in his childhood. 

A poignant sense of his foreignness was borne in on 
him. When he had to consult the conductor, whom he 
unthinkingly addressed as “Guard,” he felt as though 
they spoke different languages. Certainly the conductor 
scrutinized him as something out of the ordinary in 
passengers. 

To cast off his depression Paul tried to think himself 
back into his childish state of mind, only to be faced 
with the truth that he had been a stranger even as a 
boy. He was suffused by the familiar sense of being in 
the wrong, of being unlike his school-mates, of being 
in the same camp as Aunt Verona, who was condemned 
as anti-social. 

His school-mates! He wondered how many were still 
in Hale’s Turning, and how many would remember him, 
even by name. 

When the train drew up, he timidly scanned the figures 


SOLO 


251 


on the platform, and his heart leaped as he recognized 
two or three which had long been consigned to oblivion. 
In a distant group was a man who squinted; with a 
shudder of compunction Paul recognized Bean-Oh, whose 
eye he had damaged with his umbrella, twenty years 
since. And there, walking down the platform with a 
mail bag on his bent, green shoulders, was old Silas, the 
postmaster—spitting tobacco juice at regular intervals. 
Old Silas who kept a shop where Paul and Walter Dreer 
had spent their weekly allowance on chocolate ‘‘dudes” 
and liquorice whips, old Silas who had pumped the organ 
in the days before Dr. Wilcove had persuaded the con¬ 
gregation to install water power, old Silas who had 
seemed venerable and hoary thirteen years ago, but who 
couldn’t be more than sixty even now! Paul stood 
beside his hand-bags, and the postmaster moved on with¬ 
out a hint of recognition in his watery eyes. 

A lanky fellow, in overalls, “one of the Wigginses,” 
to judge by a generalized family likeness, was standing 
beside an empty cart. 

“Can you take these bags and my trunks to the hotel 
for me?” Paul asked. 

“What hotel?” 

“Mr. Fraser’s,” Paul replied. The name came to him 
along with the familiar sights and smells. “I didn’t 
know there was any other.” 

“Cance Fraser’s been dead two year,” said the youth 
in a tone which made Paul feel the weight of his ignor¬ 
ance. 

“Then what’s happened to the hotel?” 

“Nothin.’ Only Fred Matthews runs it now. Stayin’ 
long, Mister?” 

“I haven’t decided yet.” 

“What you sellin’—books?” 

“No.” Paul resented the familiarity, though he recog¬ 
nized in it a token of respect. The yokel’s way of show- 


252 


SOLO 


ing approval was to ask personal questions. “I’ll walk 
ahead, if you’ll bring the luggage.” He turned down a 
broad road into the village, avoiding the eyes of passers- 
by. It was late afternoon and he felt he could not face 
his townsmen until twilight had fallen. He needed an 
hour or two behind closed doors to get used to being at 
home. 


2 

At the hotel, which was merely an overgrown private 
dwelling, Paul signed the register as “P. W. Minas.” 
The name evoked no sign of interest on the part of his 
landlord, who seemed bored at the necessity of attend¬ 
ing to a guest. Paul realized that, for the first time in 
his life, he was being incuriously taken for granted “as 
one of them Minases from Bridgetown way,” and he 
mounted the stairs to his linoleum carpeted room with 
a whimsical sense of anticlimax. He had, he mused, a 
positive genius for anticlimax. 

Dinner turned out to be a humble early meal called 
“supper,” which he ate in solitude. He had washed off 
the grime of his travels and, for the sake of comfort, 
changed into a tweed sport suit. Daylight still lingered 
as he left the broad veranda of the hotel and passed 
through the gate into Prince William Road, which 
stretched up the hill under a luxuriant roof of maples 
toward an orange and scarlet sky. 

Avoiding the knot of people before the combined post 
office, barber shop and town hall, he walked slowly along 
a footpath overrun with clover. At the widely-separated 
gates, bushes of syringa, laden with cream-coloured 
blossoms, gave forth a sweet, heavy perfume. Amongst 
the grass he detected long-forgotten flowers, nameless 
purple clusters which Gritty, with her melodramatic 
imagination, had once sworn were “poison,” and a little 


SOLO 


253 


yellow and orange blossom which they had called “butter 
and eggs.” There was also a vague scent of strawberries, 
wholesomely exotic in nostrils attuned to tropical gar¬ 
dens. 

A black dog, scandalized by Paul’s English tweeds, 
came running out to protest against his existence, and 
Paul could only concur, which sent the dog away in 
snorting disgust. The faces of the small girl and boy 
who admonished him with unheeded orders of “Lie 
down, Smut,” were dimly familiar. Finally he placed 
them as “some of the Hornbys.” Perhaps Miss Hornby 
had got married and “had” them! 

His heart beat fast and his hands grew cold as he ap¬ 
proached the end of the road. Then suddenly it stood 
before him: a square house, sadly in need of repair, set 
far back in an unkempt garden. A sentinel elm—the one 
in which his kite had fouled—had been struck by light¬ 
ning, and a dead bough hung, half severed. Tears blurred 
his sight, but consternation dried them. For this house 
was almost little, and for thirteen years he had thought 
of it as “Aunt Verona’s big, bare house.” Bare it most 
assuredly was—but, oh, pitifully, not big! 

Only one tiger lily was left to bear witness to the old 
profusion, and long grass grew to the very walls. Win¬ 
dows were boarded up, fences half rotted. 

He walked to the side of the house and was surprised 
to see a neat pile of cordwood and other signs of habi¬ 
tation. The face of a woman whom he recognized as 
the village yeastmaker appeared at the kitchen window. 

He knocked and learned that Mrs. Barker was em¬ 
ployed to live in two rooms as caretaker for the owner, 
who was in foreign parts. 

“Paul Minas?” he suggested, and she agreed that that 
was “the party.” 

“Did Dr. Wilcove place you in charge?” he asked. 

“No. I come after the doctor died. The other trustee. 


254 


SOLO 


Mr. Kingsley—-he lives in Halifax—come down to fix it 
all up.” 

So Dr. Wilcove was dead. Paul was saddened at this 
news, for he had looked forward to paying off his long 
moral obligation to the guardian whom he had ignored. 
He had also looked forward to asking Dr. Wilcove 
numerous questions about Aunt Verona—questions that 
hadn’t occurred to him as a boy. He stood ruminating, 
as Mrs. Barker held the door half open, with an air of 
distrust mingled with deference and curiosity 

Paul couldn’t leave without having entered the house. 
“I’m Paul Minas,” he announced. “Don’t you remem¬ 
ber me, Mrs. Barker ? Miss Windell used to send me to 
buy yeast from you.” 

She was startled, then gave a cry of recognition. 
“Glory be! Why, if you ain’t the very dead spit of old 
Captain Andrew! Well I never! And me takin’ you for 
a summer visitor from Boston.” 

She invited him in, and he sat for a while in the old 
kitchen, ruined for him by Mrs. Barker’s fussy attempts 
to make it comfortable. She was the sort of body who 
saved newspapers and bits of string in case they might 
“come in handy,” which they didn’t. And she adorned 
every object with knitted woollen mats or bows of “baby- 
ribbon.” 

It was the first time he had set foot within the kitchen 
since Aunt Verona had left it, and he felt her loss more 
poignantly now than he had done in the beginning. Life 
in Hale’s Turning without Aunt Verona to interpret 
it was like music played on a dumb clavier. 

“Nobody could find out where you was,” Mrs. Barker 
finally explained. “Some said you was dead. So they 
decided to store all the stuff in the parlour and dining¬ 
room. I make a fire in there every off and on and 
keep it dusted. The roof’s bad, and the chimneys ain’t 
up to much.” 


SOLO 


255 


Paul was bitterly disappointed. He had unreasonably 
counted on finding his bedroom walls adorned with the 
old prints of Queen Victoria and Sir John Macdonald. 
He craved the musty smell of the rag barrel and the 
box of lump sugar in the attic. Even the playroom was 
desecrated. The piano had been moved out to make 
room for Mrs. Barker’s bed. 

He walked away from the house, turning up the road. 
Mr. Kestrell’s windmill creaked faintly in response to 
the evening breeze, and a light shone at the kitchen win¬ 
dow. He had a desire to run in and greet the mother 
of the famous star—but refrained. He must make a 
complete tour of the village before paying calls. 

The schoolyard showed traces of the “programme of 
athletic sports,” and the “greased pig contest” that had 
been held there in the afternoon. Peanut shells and 
empty popcorn packets abounded. Eager children were 
already beginning to gather for “the grand fireworks 
display.” As he passed he heard one urchin whisper: 
“Hey, skinny, look at the dude!” He was amused to 
learn that the supply of young “skinnies” had not given 
out. He presumed there were still “fatties,” and “Scot¬ 
ties,” and “shrimps.” 

A dusty motor-car in front of Walter’s gate bore wit¬ 
ness to the continued prosperity of the Dreers. The dark- 
red Ashmill house far beyond the hedge of rusty cedars 
was provincially august. 

Finally the Baptist church, wooden, whitewashed. Its 
spire had once appeared to him the loftiest point in the 
world! He walked up the gravel avenue. A branch 
of an old acacia tree still brushed the window next to the 
Meddar pew. In imagination, he could smell the stale 
odour of leather-bound hymnbooks and red rep cushions, 
could hear the thud of the organ lid as he pushed it over 
the keys, the muffled rush of air as old Silas turned on 
the water power. He could even remember the num- 


SOLO 


256 

bers of some of the hymns: 103, “Crown Him”; 99, 
“When He Cometh!” Gee-rusalem! 

As he turned into the road again from the churchyard, 
which smelt unmistakably of trampled strawberries, he 
saw a white-clad figure coming down the hill. It was a 
woman of fifty odd, slender, neat, a little dowdy, but 
exuding an air of timid allegresse that appealed to him. 
He would have recognized her had he met her in Zan¬ 
zibar, for she had not changed, except to grow dryer. 
She was imperishable. One day a wind would, tout sim- 
plement, bear her away out of life, and she would primly 
draw down her skirts as she soared. She might have 
been made of tissue-paper. He took off his cap and 
stood barring the way, and she looked up, myopically, 
with a blush mantling her faded cheeks She scarcely 
came up to his shoulder, and he remembered a Sunday 
morning when she had had to kneel down to knot his 
plaid Windsor tie for him. 

“You don’t recognize me, I’m afraid, Miss Todd.” 

She narrowed her eyes with diffident deliberation, then 
said: “No, I’m afraid I don’t seem to.” 

“Of course,” Paul sympathized. “On Dominion Day 
one sees such quantities of strangers.” 

“My memory is bad, I fear.” 

“Oh, don’t say that. For if you fail to remember me 
I’ll run away again and die of grief. And we were 
such good friends once. I had a habit of playing your 
accompaniments too fast, but you were very sweet about 
it.” 

Miss Todd stepped back, hesitated, then broke out, 
“You’re never little Paul Minas.” 

“No—big Paul.” To prove it he lifted her, kissed 
her gently and set her on her feet again. 

Gurgling Gertrude was speechless, then voluble, and 
Paul stood answering her questions for several minutes. 
He found it more difficult to give an account of himself 


SOLO 


257 


than he had anticipated, for nothing he might say could 
explain to Miss Todd how he had acquired the finish 
which, as he could see, stamped him in her eyes as high- 
toned to a degree. That she approved of him was evi¬ 
dent from her way of saying: 

“Well, I always declared you’d grow up a perfect 
wonder.” 

In reply to his inquiries Miss Todd informed him, 
with becoming modesty, but undisguised elation, that 
she hadn’t missed a day at Sunday School for fifteen 
years. She had been presented with a red-letter Bible 
in token of her faithfulness. 

“Good God!” exclaimed Paul, then caught himself. 
The “swear word” had slipped out despite his instinctive 
effort to attune himself to the piety and sobriety of his 
surroundings. More than ever he realized the force 
of Aunt Verona’s admonition. 

She suggested that he should accompany her to Mrs. 
Dreer’s where there was to be a “party,” but he excused 
himself, agreeing to call on Miss Todd the next after¬ 
noon and “stay to supper.” 

“What hot weather we’re having!” she remarked as 
they parted. She would have been horrified on arriving 
at Mrs. Dreer’s to think that she had forgotten this 
evidence of savoir-faire. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “But if you’re used to living in 
the East, the heat is rather pleasant.” By “East” he 
meant “The Orient,” and after saying it he realized 
that for Miss Todd “East” connoted “The Maritime 
provinces.” Already he had found that his mode of think¬ 
ing, as well as his vocabulary, would have to be overhauled 
for navigation in these backwaters of civilization. 

Miss Todd bowed and smiled, then walked on, a 
shade more primly, a shade more tremulously, but with 
an ineffable and appealing jauntiness. She was still 
wearing her Jubilee sovereign. 


258 


SOLO 


The village was re-awakening for the evening festiv¬ 
ities. Farmers in for the day were removing nose-bags 
from horses’ heads, whilst their wives tucked baskets 
into the clumsy waggons. To avoid them, Paul walked 
towards the marshes, crossed the trestle and made his 
way to the waterside. Ravaged by the ardours of the 
July sun, the sky was drawing blue veils across its pal¬ 
lid face. At the deserted shipyard, which presumably 
belonged to him, Paul sat on a broken keel and gazed 
across the river towards the mill. 

Not a vessel was in port, though a clumsy tug, taking 
advantage of the tide from the Basin, was puffing her 
way around the bend with two empty white scows to be 
laden with gypsum. Poor little mud-red river, in which 
his forefathers had cast anchor on portentous arrivals 
from Saint Nazaire, Cienfuegos, Rotterdam, Madras. 
They had all “sold their farms to go to sea,” and for 
their pains had died of yellow fever, or foundered, or 
become obliterated in far ends of the earth. Like him¬ 
self that ghostly legion had been familiar with forepeaks 
and caustic, scraping irons and oakum, lime juice, salt 
“horse,” and icy shrouds that rattled to the macabre tune 
of Atlantic gales. From them he had inherited a daunt¬ 
lessness of spirit, a need to navigate the bounding main 
of thought and feeling, a hatred of staying put. But 
from vague sources that had persisted from the days 
when Nova Scotia was Acadie, a fraction of what Vol¬ 
taire disdainfully called (and it was rather a gaffe) 
quelques arpents de neige, he had inherited traits of a 
different order. To him, as to Aunt Verona, had been 
bequeathed artistic heirlooms, and he was at times chilled 
with the fear that he had inherited a share of the fatalism 
that had blighted his aunt’s career. 

From the keel on which he was mounted he could 
see in the clear air of gathering night a sharp silhouette 
of Evangeline’s Blomidon, and it was an easy boat-run 


SOLO 


259 


to the beach on which the sentimental lovers were sepa¬ 
rated. His French ancestor, though dispossessed, had 
returned—for what? To be disillusioned, as usual. He 
sat musing until it was dark, then made his way stum- 
blingly toward the abandoned wharf. 

Near the overhanging bluff, after a sharp ascent, he 
came opposite the cottage of Phoebe Meddar. He walked 
around it from a safe distance, as he had done eighteen 
years before, when his inamorata lay mortally ill of an 
overindulgence in cucumbers and milk. 

Some one was coming out of the cottage, and he 
turned away, striking out across the fields towards the 
village. 

In his cheerless lodging he was unable to compose him¬ 
self for sleep. After a vain attempt to read, he rose and 
paced the room. Finally he sat down, with some vague 
notion of writing to Pat Coyle. Loneliness pressed him 
with hard knuckles. He longed to pour himself out, and 
there was no human being in whom he could entirely 
confide. He acknowledged now—now that he had come 
a journey of many thousand miles—that he was basing 
high hopes on Phoebe Meddar. He acknowledged it, 
and in the same breath upbraided himself for his folly. 
It was an expedition as hare-brained as a search for 
buried treasure. 

He longed to see Phoebe, yet feared the encounter. 
For a moment he had a wild plan of rehearsing her in 
the romantic attitude he expected of her—if he could 
only have done it anonymously! He wanted to write. 
“Do, please, be imaginative enough to rise to the oc¬ 
casion. Do understand that Paul Minas is a quixotic 
creature with a highly intellectualized sentimentalism, 
that he has chosen you—you on the strength of old, 
tenuous associations—as the embodiment of a hundred 
indeterminate desires. So, don’t for goodness’ sake be 
commonplace—or at least, don’t let your inevitable human 


260 


SOLO 


commonplaceness obtrude too bluntly. Don t stab his 
illusions; let them die of inanition if you must. Do, in 
short, understand him. He knows you can’t really 
nobody can, not even himself; he knows it, he knows it 
—but for the love of heaven, try, oh, try!” 

Then he called himself an idiot, threw down his pen, 
and undressed. His thoughts were still revolving about 
Phoebe, and as he extinguished the lamp, the words of 
an old ditty came into his head: 

“Ma chandelle est morte, 

Je n’ai plus de feu. 

Ouvre-moi ta porte, 

Pour Vamour de Dieu.” 

That was it: Phoebe must give him a new light on 
himself, must help him discover his destiny. For he was 
still obsessed with the idea that he had a message for the 
world, even a sermon to preach. So far, like Aunt 
Verona, he had merely collected texts; it was time to sort 
them and make a synthesis. 

From his window he saw rockets careening into the 
sky over the tree-tops. The village had trooped en masse 
to the school-yard, to enjoy its annual fete. By this 
time his arrival was known. Mrs. Barker and Miss 
Todd would have seen to that. Perhaps Phoebe knew. 
She would be certain to take an interest—if only by 
reason of the dearth of interests in Hale’s Turning. 
On that thought his mind fastened and reposed. 

3 

For a month Paul was occupied in carrying out repairs 
on his house. Like a self-respecting ex-second-mate he 
mixed the paint himself, and even wielded a brush when 
he could spare the time. He had conferred in Halifax 
with Mr. Kingsley, the lawyer, who, after administering 
a well-merited scolding, had handed over to him deeds 


SOLO 


261 


and securities which placed him—from the Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing point of view—in the class of the well-to-do. 

Although reinstatement in his native land had been 
accompanied by sharp disillusionment, although the peo¬ 
ple seemed ignorant and their aims petty, although 
Hale’s Turning was little more to him than a plot of 
ground surrounding Aunt Verona’s grave, nevertheless 
Paul derived a strange satisfaction from being at home. 
For the first time in his life he could review himself 
from a trustworthy angle. From his present self to the 
boy of twelve the lines converged in a perspective that 
gave a definite proportion to all his deeds. He saw in 
his tortuous development an instinctive plan of which he 
had not been clearly conscious during the process of 
developing. When he contrasted it with that of his 
former mates, he felt more than consoled for the lone¬ 
liness and doubt of the intervening years. But satis¬ 
faction in his own accomplishment was tinged with 
bitterness. Why should one have attuned oneself to 
superfine reactions when life was preponderantly un¬ 
couth? Like a racehorse he could easily score on points, 
but not on utility; the world needed cart-horses. 

Re-union with his schoolmates revived aches which he 
had lived down, reminded him of days when he had stood 
with a bat in his hand, despite his hatred of organized 
sports, in the hope that by hitting an exasperating ball 
he might win from some playmate a reciprocal show of 
interest in his mental games—an interest which had not 
been forthcoming. He acutely remembered the jeers 
that had greeted his failure to hit the ball, his sense of 
humiliation, his dread of being always in the wrong. 
And in the interval, how many, many times had the 
situation been re-echoed! 

For twenty years he had manufactured anaesthetics 
to deaden the smarts caused by disregard of senses raw 
and exposed. 


262 


SOLO 


Walter Dreer—not Mark Laval—John Ashmill, Wil¬ 
frid Fraser, Skinny Wiggins had found the world laid 
out for them. Their pastimes and professions were at 
hand like their clean shirts and stockings. Like the 
children of the grenadier’s song, each had been “born 
into this world alive, either a little Liberal, or else a little 
Conservative.” Paul had been born heir to an “obsti¬ 
nate questioning of sense and outward things.” His 
most familiar sensation was still that of yearning; his 
only means of making up to himself what the world 
failed to provide had been to strengthen his self-reliance. 
He had come to rely solely on the dictum: “Have faith 
in yourself and nothing can prevail against you.” 

His first taste of self-vindication had come to him on 
the day at Port Said when he had wandered away over 
the sands instead of rejoining his ship. His first taste 
of real security came in the succeeding years, when, 
remote from every companion of his youth, he had dis¬ 
covered that he was nearly impervious to further in¬ 
comprehension, indifferent to public opinion. It was 
an unsocial and perhaps unnatural kind of security, for 
one of its ingredients was disdain; but more natural 
kinds had eluded him; every attempt to identify himself 
with the world—schools, musical institutions, marine 
disciplines—had been ill-fated. 

As a child he had judged himself abnormally weak. 
As a man he found himself in abnormal ways strong, 
the strongest personage he knew, except for artists and 
thinkers, whom he knew only through their expression. 
If he were, after all, strong, why couldn’t he, too, like 
artists and thinkers, express himself, and thus patiently 
reduce the emotional havoc wrought by years of dis¬ 
proportion. It had been humiliating to slave in ships 
for enough to eat; but no one had been able to impair 
his integrity by so much as a finger-mark. The world 
he had envisaged as a pack of wolves which barely tol- 


SOLO 


263 


erated him when he howled his feeble quota in their 
interest and which were prepared to devour him if he 
took off his uncomfortable wolf’s clothing; a mob which 
indulged in meaningless squabbles outside the walls of 
his stronghold. He had long since become a hermit in 
order to survive and now he found himself more isolated 
than ever. Bon! The world should see what a thorough¬ 
going hfcrmit he could be. 

Walter Dreer, who was cashier in the Bridgetown 
bank, had begun by hailing him as a priceless acquisition 
to the life of the community. But when Paul had failed 
to find satisfaction in the bucolic merriment of evening 
parties at which Walter was the scintillating jeune pre¬ 
mier, Walter’s attitude became resentful. Through the 
inevitable roundabout channels Paul learned that his old 
chum spoke of him as “a smart-Alec.” This criticism 
was weakened by the fact, obvious to the village at large, 
that Walter aped him. 

John Ashmill, his former oppressor, was more satis¬ 
factory. John’s very grossness gave him a tolerance 
which approximated breadth of vision. He had gone 
into the lumber business with his father, and in hours 
of leisure his sole ambition was to be entertained. From 
far and near he collected cronies whom Hale’s Turning 
considered “fast.” He had * disgraced his people by 
eloping with Bessie Day, a girl whom Paul still regarded 
as dirty and bold. The pair lived in a house on the 
hill above the Baptist Church, played cards, drank and 
danced. They had even been known to engage in these 
pastimes on Sundays, and Miss Todd, over her garden 
fence, had seen Bessie smoking! When Paul, according 
to clamorous invitations, accompanied John and Bessie 
to Halifax on a riotous week-end excursion, he was 
voted, by members of the Women’s Christian Temperance 
Union, “Not so nice as he seemed.” 

Wilfrid Fraser, a grood young man who had become 


SOLO 


264 

a Master of Arts and was wavering between a natural 
bent for school-teaching and an urge to “go in for law,” 
giggled at Paul’s most serious remarks, for he had been 
told Paul had a sense of humour. 

Skinny Wiggins, whose profession was uncertain but 
who disappeared at intervals to work on a tug, ad¬ 
dressed Paul with a casualness that was meant to cloak 
honest stupefaction. For Skinny, Paul s transformation 
into a man who could dominate him with smiles,. swift 
speech and even, as he suspected, muscle, was in the 
category of things unfathomable. In the end Skinny 
took to passing him with a nod, his hands thrust into 
his pockets, his cap over his eye, his cheek filled with 
chewing tobacco. 

Mark Laval was the greatest disappointment. 
Throughout his youth Paul had thought of the French 
lad as a genius. He had looked forward with intense 
curiosity to seeing what hlark had made of himself. On 
his second day at home he met Mark at the post office, 
and it was evident his drunken father had made good the 
promise to “kick all the nonsense out of him.” There 
were even signs that he had taught his son the delights 
of the bottle. Mark was down from camp with a split 
finger. He had grown into a giant. It was easy to see 
that he had never worn a presentable suit of clothes nor 
come under any refining personal influence. On recog¬ 
nizing Paul, however, his remarkable eyes gave forth 
a reflection of the wistful enthusiasm of former days. 
Not once did he complain of the ill fortune that had 
denied him an education, a home, a hundred desired 
boons, yet every vibration of his voice and every gesture 
proclaimed a brutalized, murdered longing for oppor¬ 
tunities to discipline the creative forces that had welled 
up in him. It was with genuine reluctance that Paul, 
after a half hour’s conversation, concluded that Mark’s 
failure was due to absence of organizing ability. There 


SOLO 265 

was no lack of detonating material; simply there was no 
gun. 

“You was always a smart little feller,” said Mark, as 
they were parting. “I knowed you was a wonder—and so 
y’are.” 

And so he was. A wonder even to himself! And all 
they could do was to let him go on being a wonder and 
go on wondering about it. 

He completed the renovation of his house, labouring 
with a new determination. The profane world had failed 
him; he had in self-defence retired into his own. He 
must abide by the consequences. Better, at any rate, to 
be an intelligent hermit than a sheep—-especially in the 
light of all this war-talk. 

4 

The Halifax Herald had reported diplomatic embroil¬ 
ments abroad, but Paul was not interested. Like most 
sailors he had not acquired a taste for newspapers. Ever 
since the days when he had argued with Otto, he had 
regarded everything connected with war as a misapplica¬ 
tion of energy. War? Why, it was a phenomenon he 
had discussed out of countenance with army officers in 
Egypt and cast off as an antiquated institution, a thing 
to be placed in a museum beside the mummies. 

But it had gone to the heads of the people like rum. 

John Ashmill was going to enlist, in spite of old Dave’s 
protests. At the age of twenty-seven John had outgrown 
every other form of excitement. 

In Halifax, when Paul went to buy furniture for his 
house, men jumped upon soap-boxes and ranted. Never 
had the world seemed so colossally bad-mannered. Never 
had the walls of his fortress been so aimlessly battered; 
never had it seemed so impregnable. 

There was a “mass meeting” in the town hall of Hale’s 
Turning—a bare room over the post office where Paul 


266 


SOLO 


had been wont to play Clement! sonatinas at school con¬ 
certs. He left in the middle of the first speech and 
wandered up the road towards his deserted house, car- 
rying away two impressions: the image of a red-faced 
speaker, Mr. Dreer, who gave “facts” about Germany 
which were phantastically inaccurate, and a face for 
which he had been on the lookout. Phoebe Meddar had 
returned from her summer vacation, and he had seen 
her as he passed down the aisle. To his kindling interest 
she had responded with a polite little bow. He had been 
prepared for disappointment on the score of beauty, of 
imagination, of intelligence, but not of taste. The Phoebe 
whom he had recognized in the motley gathering was 
undoubtedly pretty, imaginative, intelligent—but she was 
“ladylike”; conspicuously and provinciallv so, like Flora 
Ashmill and Miss Todd. He had wanted Phoebe to be 
natural—not boisterously natural like Gritty Kestrell, 
but sweetly and gently natural. Yet his disappointment 
was mitigated, for Phoebe had been as distinct from her 
neighbours as a flower from its leaves. 

The phrases of the sensation-monger still rang in his 
ears as he entered the dark house. He resented Mr. 
Dreer as he had long ago resented the evangelist. Both 
endeavoured to convert by fair means or foul; both were 
vulgar. 

Mrs. Barker had been installed as cook-housekeeper, 
with a bedroom upstairs, and the playroom had been 
restored to the dignity of music-room. Here Paul had 
placed the few Persian and Egyptian objects he had 
brought from Cairo. The piano was still a brave instru¬ 
ment. He lit candles and sat down to obliterate the 
vexatious mood. The sound ran across the floors and 
echoed in far-away corners of the house v During lulls 
he heard the rustling boughs of the cherry tree. The 
candles flickered gently to airs that came in from the 
orchard, and over his shoulder Paul saw his own shadow 


SOLO 


267 


stretching eerily towards the blackboard on which he had 
been drawing a picture of a locomotive when Aunt 
Verona startled him with the strange word: “labyrinth.” 

That was life—a labyrinth, a never-ending spiral. 

The rooms had been redecorated and Paul had begun 
to distribute the best pieces of Aunt Verona’s furniture. 
Some had been removed to the woodshed whence they 
were to be transported to auction rooms in Bridgetown. 
On his way upstairs, he paused to rummage in drawers 
which had thus far escaped attention. In one he came 
on a lacquer box which seemed familiar, although he 
could not place it among his possessions. It was locked, 
and there was no key. Curiosity prompted him to force 
back the cover. 

His eyes fell on a humble bunch of dried flowers: 
daisies, clovers, buttercups. He was puzzled A faint 
odour of coco-nut cookies gently assailed him and van¬ 
ished. Then he remembered. 

He closed the lid of the box and replaced it in the 
drawer. The girl of seven who had unconsciously set 
his emotions a-twitter for the first time and then suc¬ 
cumbed to her dear little greediness had actually been the 
elder sister of the conspicuously ladylike young woman 
to whom he had bowed this very evening in the town 
hall. Perhaps, one day, he would bring Phoebe to his 
house to show her the box; its story could not fail to 
touch her. 

As he undressed, the phrases of the speechmaker kept 
recurring. “A high duty to perform,” “A sacred priv¬ 
ilege to exercise,” “An opportunity to devote oneself to 
a great cause.” 

What great cause? The cause of the herd that had 
made existence so difficult, against whose exquisite forms 
of oppression one had had the perseverance and ingenuity 
to render oneself proof? Not at all; it was the great 
cause, pardi! Nobody knew wherein the greatness lay; 


268 


SOLO 


everybody was too passionately carried away by all this 
greatness to inquire! 

A high duty to take part in a savage “free-for-all” 
and take it seriously! A sacred privilege to go back into 
a dusty stampede! The answer was a snort. The 
Bridgetown Quakers were as unsympathetic, in the mass, 
as their conscientiously belligerent brothers in the mass. 
No mob’s programme could be his; that was the essence 
of his experience. 

After getting into bed he heard a sound which he took 
to be a knock at the door. He was startled, listened 
tensely for a moment, and concluded it was the wind. 
Then he remembered he had left the playroom window 
open. He had meant to close it, for there was an en¬ 
campment of gypsies outside the village. He lit a candle 
and went downstairs. A puff of air extinguished the 
light, and he felt his way across the playroom. 

Something in the atmosphere made him uneasy. A 
trace of his old dread of the dark assailed him, and he 
stood, back to the window, exhorting his nerves. The 
restlessness only increased, and he started violently when 
Mrs. Barker’s clock in the kitchen whirred, preparatory 
to striking the hour. 

Its tones recalled the exotic chimes, and the solace which 
was ever associated with them came to his aid. He could 
make out the position of the piano, for a corner of the 
polished lid faintly gleamed. His attention was suddenly 
but calmly riveted on this glow, which, whilst he looked, 
became more and more diffused, till it seemed to outline 
a human figure. 

Paul breathlessly waited. 

The figure died away, and no glow was left to mark 
the position of the piano. For some moments he stood 
rigid, then turned and left the playroom, numb, exalted, 
reassured—armed as with an invisible coat of mail. 


XI 


I 

It had become second nature for Paul to avoid his 
kind. As a sailor in port he had invariably slipped away 
from his mates. In the cafes of Europe he had preferred 
to sit at remote tables. Even in Cairo his real self had 
never mingled with his throng of acquaintances. Con¬ 
sequently he was in no sense disconcerted by a new es- 
strangement. However lonely he might feel, he was in a 
situation with which he knew how to cope. 

There were days when he spoke to no one but Mrs. 
Barker, Mr. Silva, or Becky States, who still came to scrub 
and iron and chant unearthly melodies in her cracked, 
growling baritone. He developed reclusive habits that 
reminded him of Aunt Verona. He had already begun 
to collect texts—from such books as Norman AngeH’s 
The Great Illusion. “When,” he sardonically mused, 
“shall I begin writing my futile history!” 

Each new manifestation of the belligerent spirit inten¬ 
sified his disdain. His views were understood in no 
quarter and tolerated in few. Current patriotism struck 
him as being a glorification of the spirit in which Skinny 
Wiggins had been wont, with his bony fist, to prop a 
victim against a wall and reduce him to submission with 
the self-righteous query, “Did I? Did I? Say I did 
and I’ll bust you in the eye!” Skinny certainly had; but 
had his heart been pure, his attitude was insulting and 
ill-bred—and patriotism was both, “My country, right 
269 


270 


SOLO 


or wrong!” cried the patriot, and the mob cheered. Well, 
let the mob not be surprised if he, Paul Minas, found 
the sentiment singularly fatuous. He listened with new 
ears to the National Anthem. Even poor, timid, quaver¬ 
ing little Miss Todd could, with a holy zeal, sing: 

“O Lord our God, arise! 

Scatter his enemies, 

And make them fall! 

Confound their politics, 

Frustrate their knavish tricks; 

On Thee our hopes we fix, 

God save us all 1 ’^ 

He drew endless comfort from the picture of his deluded 
fellow-citizens, packed into the town hall, singing that 
last line with all their might! 

Occasionally he lost his temper, under the stress. 
Once when Mr. Kingsley implied that his attitude was 
based on sophistry, Paul broke forth in an impassioned 
counter-charge. “Christliness,” he concluded, “the most 
civilizing of all attitudes, assumes that men are brothers. 
The War Office assumes that they are members of op¬ 
posing camps, all but one of which contain ‘bloody 
foreigners/ I feel no urge to assert the superlative 
virtues of my particular nation and kill a lot of foreign¬ 
ers to prove the fictitious assertion. Why should I accept 
the mob’s version? I’ve never accepted its opinion on 
any other issue. If I did I should have to accept its dis¬ 
approval of outlandish traits that are a vital part of 
my own nature, which would be spiritual suicide. Forget 
‘honour’ and ‘righteousness,’ cut out the hypocrisy, the 
drooling jingoism and sentimentality, and call on Mars. 
He’s your man—not God. I should imagine by now 
your God is bloody well fed up with the whole of crea¬ 
tion. I know I am. Do what you like with it—you and 
the people who understand its interests!” 


SOLO 


271 


The following winter, with its blizzards, ice and slush, 
seemed interminable. Paul read, and made music, op¬ 
pressed by a sense of his dilettantism. It was maddening 
to be a mere fly on the cake of life—but even worse, he 
mused, to be a real currant, embedded in its dough. 
During the long transition weeks, when partial thaws 
alternated with frosts, when bleak winds and icy rains 
tore at the trees and fields in a final effort to frustrate 
the revival of life, Paul’s isolation was relieved by con¬ 
ferences with old Dave Ashmill, who, in response to 
the increasing clamour for ships, had formed a syndicate 
to take over disused yards and, with lumber from his 
own mills, build wooden vessels on government contract. 
Paul had agreed to sell his waterside properties, and 
accepted the post of secretary of the Hale’s Turning 
yard. 

There were many papers to prepare and arrangements 
to make for the installation of plant and procuring of 
supplies. Old Ashmill, like his son, cultivated a coarse 
heartiness which resembled broad-mindedness, and 
chuckled whenever Paul gave vent to subversive remarks 
of the sort which had stamped him, in the eyes of Hale’s 
Turning, as an “atheist”—the most damning epithet in 
its bestowal—or “odd,” the epithet that had attached to 
Miss Windell. 

Mrs. Ashmill, who was prepared to receive him coldly, 
owing to his reputation, he had won over in one stroke 
by arriving at her house in a dinner jacket and address¬ 
ing the parlour-maid as though she were a maid rather 
than a “hired girl.” Flora Ashmill, a virgin of forty 
and quite the most genteel object in the country, was 
deliciously appalled by his authoritative manner of con¬ 
tradicting her on her best topics: painting, music, horti¬ 
culture. 

Regarding his resistance the two women maintained a 
pregnant silence, making their knitting needles click with 


SOLO 


272 

symbolic purport. They were bound to respect his views, 
for Mr, Ashmill had given out, with a hint of sardonic 
humour, that “Young Minas” was “indispensable” to him 
in his government shipbuilding project. Old Dave was 
universally suspected of a penchant for cheating all forms 
of orthodoxy on the sly, while conspicuously upholding 

them. , , _ . . 

As befitted the leading family of Hale s Turning, the 
Ashmills patronized education. Mrs. Ashmill awarded 
an annual scholarship, and her daughter gave an annual 
“strawberry social” at which objects were sold for the 
purpose of raising funds to buy plaster models of The 
Winged Victory” and lithographs of the Colosseum for 
the schoolhouse. The teachers were also invited once a 
year to dinner, and it was this rite that brought Paul into 
contact with Phcebe Meddar. So far he had only ex¬ 
changed casual phrases with her at the post office where 
the villagers repaired every evening, ostensibly to collect 
letters, inostensibly to gossip. The ladylikeness which 
had vexed him on his first glimpse of Phcebe he now 
put down to constraint. It was most marked in the 
presence of Flora Ashmill, whose method of establishing 
her own superiority was to place everybody else at a dis- 
advantage. 

“How do you ever manage to keep it up year in and 
year out, Miss Meddar?” Flora murmured, referring 
to Phoebe’s position in the village school. 

“Oh, really, Miss Ashmill, it isn’t so bad,” Phoebe 
explained, hesitating between natural shyness and a desire 
to be hearty. “I actually enjoy it.” 

Paul leapt to the rescue. “Of course she does. You 
ladies who’ve been sheltered like beautiful greenhouse 
roses”—he paused a second to let Flora revel in it 
“often miss one of life’s best thrills : the thrill of fulfilling 
a responsibility.” 

Flora, who was plain and unloved, let her soul linger 


SOLO 


273 


over the word he had so deftly tossed to her—“beauti¬ 
ful/’ and Phoebe sent across the table a glance acknowl¬ 
edging his protection. Her cheeks were like petals. “I 
wonder if you’re really as remarkable as the addle-pated 
girls of Hale’s Turning make out,” her nice blue eyes 
seemed to say. 

After dinner Mrs. Ashmill proposed music. Would 
Mr. Minas care to play? Paul welcomed the suggestion. 
In this hideous plush drawing-room, many years ago, he 
had played for guests of Miss Ashmill driven mdoors 
by a shower which had blasted the booths at her straw¬ 
berry social. 

“And you were so small,” Flora archly reminded him, 
“that you couldn’t reach the pedals.” 

For the first time since his return Phoebe favoured him 
with a directly personal allusion. “Oh,” she laughed, 
“he was the sort of child who would simply 
imagine he was pedalling and somehow produce the same 
effect.” 

Paul shot her a look of delighted surprise. It was 
shrewd. And, for Hale’s Turning, original. But for 
the stiff presence of the Ashmill ladies and the silly stare 
of Myrtle Wilcove he would have been tempted to reply, 
“Exactly, and if you only knew it, Phoebe, he was the 
sort of child who while practising in a bare playroom 
used to imagine that you were listening to his strains, 
and he played all the better for the breathless interest 
his image of you took in them!” In the circumstances 
all he dared say was a bantering: 

“How well you understand small boys! Does that 
come from experience as a teacher, or is it a natural 
gift?” 

Phoebe’s ladylikeness had vanished. “Oh, I’m sure 
the ability to understand you implies something more than 
either, something approximating genius!” The sarcasm 
was veiled by the gentleness of her voice, her frank 


SOLO 


274 

smile, the suggestion of pale gilding that marked the con¬ 
tours of her smooth hair, her compact little figure, her 
simple black satin frock. 

The retort pleased him, yet as he turned to the key¬ 
board he shrugged his shoulders with a trace of the humil¬ 
iation he had always felt as being treated as a superior 
being, instead of a quite ordinary boy. 

At half-past nine he escorted Phoebe from the house, 
past the historic rose-beds. Wrapped in cloaks and 
equipped with overshoes and a lantern, they plodded 
through acres of slush which Phoebe likened to pineapple 
sherbet. For an unnaturally long period Paul had es¬ 
chewed feminine society. The cosiness of the girl whose 
arm he was holding roused susceptibilities that had been 
lying torpid. Phoebe chatted easily, but never aimlessly. 
Her remarks were inclined to be edged. Her reserve 
piqued him. It was as though there were a lump in it 
which all his personal'arts failed to dissolve. He decided, 
on the spot, to challenge her. 

“Tell me, Phoebe”—it was the first time he had used 
her name—“why do you dislike me ? 

She looked up at him, her face a patchwork of curved 
shadows cast by the lantern. Her lips were closed and 
there was a half timid glint in her eyes. 

“Do I?” she fenced. 

“Yes a little. It’s not so much dislike as distrust. 
Why?”’ 

She considered it. “Why don’t you answer the ques¬ 
tion for yourself, since you seem to know so much about 
my feelings—more than I do, I assure you.” 

With a grunt he recalled the far distant occasion when 
she had been unable to state the colour of his eyes. “Do 
you mean you don’t know that you distrust me ? he 
insisted. 

She went off on a strange tack. “I would have 
imagined,” she said thoughtfully, “that seafaring would 


SOLO 


275 

have dulled your sensitiveness. You must have had some 
bad times.” 

He was touched. “It’s good to hear you say that.” 

“For mercy’s sake, why?” 

He came back to a flippant tone to conceal his conces¬ 
sion to sentimentality. “Because,” he laughed, “it’s 
another neat sign of your comprehension of small boys 
*—or rather a small boy. It proves you, according to 
your own rating, approximately a genius. Besides, now 
that you’ve said it, I’m sure the verdict is onlv ‘distrust.’ 
It was not the sort of remark one makes of a person one 
dislikes.” 

“Aren’t you conceited!” she commented. 

“Ah, now I understand the grounds for distrust.” 

“I dare say you understand heaps of things. Here’s 
the gate. Will you come in?” 

He declined the formal invitation, and stood, throwing 
the lantern’s rays along the pathway. Within the last 
half hour Phoebe had revived his romantic hopes for her. 
She seemed to have it in her to rise to occasions. 

He splashed his way homeward with a refreshed cour¬ 
age. It was as though his inner egos were happily 
smiling, after long days and nights of unacknowledged 
chagrin. 

As he entered his house he hummed a snatch from an 
opera he had heard in some far corner of the globe: “lo 
son barbiere, di qualita—di qualita.” 

Why, he asked himself, should that particular ditty 
come to his lips? What on earth was the association 
between The Barber of Seville and the mood of the 
evening? For a few moments he indulged in the fas¬ 
cinating exercise of thinking backward, in search of a 
clue to the mysterious workings of sub-consciousness. 
At last he had it: qualita, quality. “Quality” was the 
word for which his mind had groped at the dinner table, 
when trying to define the flavour of the Ashmill ladies. 


SOLO 


276 

They considered themselves persons “of quality”—that 
was it. 

Quality, Quality Street —Phoebe Throstle! Everything 
led back to Phoebe! 

He shivered as he passed the open door of the ghostly 
playroom, and hurried upstairs to bed. 

2 

Inordinate bustle troubled the slumbers of Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing with the advent of spring, reminding the aged of 
days when ship “lanchings” were of frequent occurrence. 
From the riverside issued an incessant din of trip-ham¬ 
mers, and as summer wore on, the hulls of three stocky 
steamers loomed up. On Sunday afternoons the pastime 
of the godly was to walk along the bluff, survey these 
evidences of Dave Ashmill’s ingenuity, and make com¬ 
ment on the progress since the previous Sabbath. 

Paul's abilities had been discovered by old Dave and 
put to the best advantage. Chief among them was a 
knack he had acquired at sea of handling men. Ash- 
milks success had been due in good measure to his gift 
for suborning brains, and Paul knew, from Aunt Verona, 
that his own father had swelled the Ashmill fortunes by 
enlarging the foreign market. 

Paul noted that the people who had liked him seized 
on his new occupation with relief, as though to assure 
him that by contributing his knowledge of ships towards 
the success of the allies he was in a measure redeeming 
himself. He declined the shift. 

“I’m doing it not because it’s my ‘bit,’ ” he said truc¬ 
ulently one day to the Baptist minister, “but because 
building ships is always a worth-while task.” 

“And sinking them?” 

“Is, of course, insane.” 

“Ah, my young friend, how true! I fear Germany's 


SOLO 


277 


insanity is of the incurable kind. That comes of denying 
her God.” 

“Don’t talk rot, man,” said Paul, who still harboured a 
grudge against the sect that had tried to Shanghai him 
into the fold. “It’s insane to fire off twelve-inch guns. 
All phases of warfare are insane. We’re no more exempt 
than tbe enemy.” 

The minister was stung by the trace of contempt in 
Paul’s tone. “Do you realize,” he asked, “that your 
remarks might be interpreted as seditious?” 

“Fully. The truth is always seditious—as Socrates 
and Christ knew to their cost. You men of God don’t 
preach Christ these days. You preach Jehovah, and 
choose the bloodiest texts in the Old Testament. Why 
not be consistent—be patriarchal, practise polygamy, and 
the whole bag of tricks!” 

The minister bowed and walked away. Paul had no 
remorse, for he was settling an old score. He was not 
impious. Faith had been bred in him through occasional 
flashes of insight. He passionately envied adepts who 
had penetrated into the inner temples. But his religion 
was an intensely personal relationship with the infinite— 
an infinite which men, in the feebleness of their imagi¬ 
nation, had had to personify as an old gentleman with a 
beard. He heartily endorsed the proverb which says: “II 
vaut mieux avoir affaire a Dieu qa’ a ses saints ” Of 
course he had made an enemy of the minister, but he 
preferred enemies to friends who edited his conduct to 
bring it into conformity with their mechanical orthodoxy. 

Even Phoebe, his new friend, persisted in hushing up 
his heterodoxies, though he had striven to train her into 
understanding, if not sharing, his own contempt of crit¬ 
icism. His views had shocked her, as they shocked all 
the others. But Phoebe possessed a mind that invited 
ideas. Unlike the girls with whom she had studied at 
Normal School, she had not considered her education 


278 


SOLO 


at an end when she received a diploma. Paul had patiently 
waited for her to overcome her first distrust, to conquer 
the pride which made her hold out against the personality 
that had flurried less fastidious women. But in the end 
it was inevitable they should be together, for he alone 
could give her glimpses of a civilization broader and richer 
than that of which she, as assistant principal of the local 
school, was the accredited representative. 

Paul guessed that other girls twitted Phoebe for her 
interest in him, and in order to spare her had checked 
his first advances. He guessed, too, that his advent was 
responsible for a certain coolness between Phoebe and 
Wilfrid Fraser, who had paid attention to her for years. 
He had known Phoebe subtly defiant with the girls who 
were loudest in their war zeal, and he had observed, with 
sweetly painful concern, her distrust of him change 
gradually to trust, her edged retorts give way to earnest 
and intimate confidences. He knew that Phoebe’s in¬ 
valid mother disapproved of his iconoclasm. He knew 
that Bob Meddar, whom he liked, had warned Phoebe 
against accepting at their face value the ideas of a con¬ 
fessed visionary—and, worst of all, he knew that Bob’s 
warning was fearfully well-founded. Yet he was drawn. 

Phoebe wept helplessly when Bob went overseas. A 
few months later she saw Wilfrid off to Ottawa, where 
he had obtained a war post that exempted him from 
action for which he was physically disqualified. Paul 
met Phoebe a few days later at the post office, and their 
interview was a little strained. 

He had found a note from Mark Laval, written just 
before embarking. It was short, but glowed with en¬ 
thusiasm, as Mark’s eyes had glowed in the days when 
he declaimed romantic verse under the cherry tree. ‘‘One 
of them there dumdums will probably get me,” Mark 
concluded, “but it will be better than a tree falling on 
me.” 


SOLO 


279 


As they walked through the fields Paul read the letter 
to Phoebe. 

“Mark will be a good soldier,” she commented. 

“Yes—for men like him the war means emancipation. 
For men like Wilfrid Fraser it would mean torture, 
slavery > and death. Sensibilities are a luxury society dis¬ 
penses with in wartime. The arrangement would be 
more successful if the sensitive men could dispense with 
their own sensibilities at a given signal. But butterflies 
don’t revert into caterpillars.” 

“Just the same,” said Phoebe, with a hint of hostility, 
“Wilfrid is doing his bit.” 

“That’s such a glib word, Phoebe—‘bit.’ You who 
are so meticulous, why don’t you avoid it?” He spoke 
more testily than the trifle warranted, his nerves showing 
the strain of increasingly intensive propaganda 

He knew her feelings were hurt, for she half turned 
from him. With a tinge of pride and a tinge of appeal 
in his tones he apologized. Some maternal instinct 
stirred in her, and she took his arm. 

“I’m trying to understand you, Paul,” she said. “But 
you’re so different from everybody I know!” 

He was moved. “At any rate you don’t despise me— 
that’s something to hold to.” 

“Oh Paul—despise!” There were tears in her voice. 

They had reached a deserted grove of alders behind 
the Meddar cottage. Suddenly he took Phoebe in his 
arms and kissed her—gently. For some time her face lay 
against his shoulder. When she finally looked up she gave 
him an anxious smile. Her eyes were like wet violets. 

He held her close, as if to assure himself by sheer 
contact that he had not made a mistake. 

3 

Gradually it became apparent to Paul that Phoebe stag¬ 
gered under the weight of his anomalous status. The 


280 


SOLO 


isolation natural to him was for her a new and trying 
experience. She continued to knit and make bandages, 
but worked in private, recoiling from the chatter about 
slackers and heroes. Unwittingly she antagonized shal¬ 
low girls and noticed that Myrtle Wilcove, who had been 
a competitor for her position at the school, made the 
most of her advantage with public opinion. 

When coercive measures began to be seriously dis¬ 
cussed Phoebe was dismayed. It had been hard enough 
to be torn daily between the duty of teaching her pupils 
prescribed lessons in patriotism and that of defending 
an unpatriotic lover, but it was harrowing to guess the 
consequences of his attitude should conscription come into 
effect. 

“What will you do then, dear?” she inquired timidly. 

He was hurt by the implication that he might adapt 
his principles to the exigencies of society and made a 
truculent reply. 

Phoebe was quiet for a while and they sat staring into 
the open door of the Klondike stove in her mother’s 
sitting-room—a room embellished with shells and painted 
ostrich eggs. 

“But Paul—they will—don’t they-?” 

“Send one to prison, you mean? Don’t be afraid to 
speak plainly, Phoebe. Now’s a time for honest people 
to do so, now that highfalutin lies are being hoisted 
banner-like for folk to rally under. ... No doubt I’ll 
be sent to prison if the worst comes to the worst.” 

Her lips were quivering. 

“They won’t shoot me,” he added bitterly. “Which 
proves that society, after all, has an embryonic con¬ 
science.” 

Then he relented and took her in his arms. 

“I’m so selfish,” she sobbed, as he petted her, “to make 
you supply courage for two, when I ought to be a source 
of strength to you.” 



SOLO 


281 


“You are, dear—you are,” he replied abstractedly. But 
to himself he had to avow that Phoebe was in his boat 
■—his privateer—only as supercargo. He was haunted 
by the problem of her fate; it weighed on him more 
heavily than his own. 

Some weeks later he found her with red eyes, shrink¬ 
ing. Her manner drove from his mind a momentous 
development in his own affairs which he had come to 
announce. He talked of trivial matters, waiting for a clue. 
They came around to the inevitable topic, and suddenly, 
with a little rush of words, Phoebe suggested that he 
should make some compromise before it was too late. 

“You might do something that would keep you from 
the actual fighting. Couldn’t you-” 

Paul rose from his chair and paced the room. “Is 
that all you’ve been able to make of my abstention?” he 
cried. “Compromise? Now? I’m less ready to com¬ 
promise than I’ve ever been.” 

The statement echoed in his ears like some death 
knell of reasonableness. Life was a matter of winds and 
currents, and one’s views must be swung about like the 
yards of a ship if one hoped to avoid reefs. In his most 
lucid moments he perceived that he was stubborn, as 
Aunt Verona had been. Yet fatalistically he pitted his 
obduracy against what he regarded as the massed stub¬ 
bornness of the world. He preferred shipwreck on 
the shores of his own Utopia to arrival in the promised 
land of the commonalty. 

Phoebe was weeping, and he guessed that something 
unusual had happened. He approached to pat her 
shoulder and saw the tears come more freely. Then, 
her face buried in her hands, she explained that her 
brother had been killed. 

For a long while Paul held her in his arms, consoling 
her as best he could. In the end she became quiet, and 
Paul, chastened, let her talk. 



282 


SOLO 


“Oh, how could they—how could they?” she cried, with 
a return to incoherence. “Poor old Bobby—Oh, why 
can’t / go out and avenge him!” 

He had never heard her so emphatic. Although she 
was unstrung by grief, he could not refrain from pre¬ 
senting the corrective aspect of the case. “But don’t 
you see, Phoebe dear, that’s the spirit that has brought 
all this horror about? The more one avenges, the more 
there is to avenge. It reduces civilization to an arena, 
and peace merely means ‘half time’—a pause during 
which you rest and repair yourself for new frays.” 

Phoebe was listening fitfully. “They must be wrong 
though, Paul—Oh, don’t you ever feel that you could 
wipe such people off the face of the earth? But of course 
you don’t—forgive me, dear.” 

Through a haze he saw Phoebe retreating. Mechan¬ 
ically he replied: 

“All I feel is that some girl like you in Munich is 
saying exactly those words to some man like me, pro¬ 
vided they have any who are still out of the net.” 

“They haven’t—you may depend on it.” She said it 
in a tone which her nervousness rendered somewhat 
aggressive, then halted in a panic. 

He looked at her steadily. “You were going to add, 
‘And we shouldn’t have any, either.’ ” 

Phoebe rose and walked to the window. “Oh, it’s 
hideous. I just can’t make it out.” 

He had an irresistible impulse to test her. 

“Would it make matters more comprehensible to you 
if I were to give in after all?” 

She wheeled about. In her glance he read what he had 
dreaded to find: a hope that he would be unfaithful to 
the principles which she knew he venerated but which 
she could only partially understand. He was something 
Phoebe had “taken up” as she had taken up chemistry 
and mathematics, and the study was a little beyond her. 


SOLO 


283 


He turned away with a heavy sigh. “Unfortunately, I 
don’t think much of deathbed conversions,” he said. 
Her distress now failed to move him; he was too 
exhausted to feel. 

She took his hands imploringly. 

“Oh, Paul, I’m stupid. But I do wish to understand 
for I—” She hesitated again, at his unresponsiveness, 
and he patted her hands, then replaced them at her 
sides. 

“No not even that,” he said, flinching from the truth, 
yet forcing his way toward it. “You thought you loved 
me, and in a sort of way you do. But it’s not quite the 
way, and it’s not your fault. I should never have in¬ 
flicted myself on you. I ought to know better than to 
invite people to subscribe to me. I fail them, and they 
fail me. But one can’t always be wise and farsighted. 
One so dreads to be eternally thrust back on oneself. 
... A vagrant has no right to claim love and under¬ 
standing; he sacrifices that for his independence. Be¬ 
sides, a vagrant has nothing to offer in exchange—save 
picturesque tales of his selfish vagrancy!” 

As he talked he heard the words falling dead at 
Phoebe’s feet, as all his weighted words must. She could 
understand him only when his speech soared on wings of 
passion. Even yet he might sweep her doubts aside in a 
single gesture, but all passion had subsided. He saw 
her fingers twisting and intertwining, and looked away. 

“In other circumstances,” he went on, “we might have 
found in each other enough love to sustain us. The war 
has divided the world into camps of thought, with ortho¬ 
dox folk joined together in temporary fraternity in one, 
and in the other an assortment of outcasts with an assort¬ 
ment of loyalties. You’re not in my camp, dear. It 
wouldn’t even be wise that you should be.” 

Phoebe winced, but the hard cogent tone helped to 
steady her. “Who are your colleagues?” she demanded. 


284 


SOLO 


“God only knows. They must exist. I haven’t lost 
faith in rationality even yet.” 

“But how can you choose isolation?” 

He smiled grimly, remembering for the first time the 
tidings he had come to impart. “My social isolation 
became one degree more acute to-day,” he announced, 
“and not from choice. I’ve been asked to resign from the 
shipyard.” 

Phoebe’s face exhibited consternation. “Oh, but Paul! 
I thought Mr. Ashmill declared you were indispensable 
to him!” 

“His good repute is even more so. He has political 
enemies, and couldn’t afford to have them go on badger¬ 
ing him about his able-bodied young secretary. As the 
little song says, ‘I for one don’t blame him.’ ” 

“But how terrible! My dear, what will you do?” 

The exclamation and the question bored him. “Oh, 
Phoebe,” he said, and his voice broke, “does it dreadfully 
matter?” 

He left her, unable to promise that he would return. 
The prospect of further scenes, further misunderstand¬ 
ings, futile tears, was more than he could face. Phoebe 
had pronounced her doom and his when she reminded him 
that he had to supply courage for both. He hadn’t 
enough. 


L 


XII 

I 

One afternoon in the summer of 1917 Walter Dreer 
arrived on leave from Toronto in the uniform of a 
cadet in the air force. He had transferred from service 
to service, with the result that he had not yet been sent 
overseas. 

His greeting to Paul was, “Hello, when are you going 
to join up?” 

“I hadn’t thought of joining up at all.” 

Walter, who had hitherto reserved taunts for occasions 
when Paul was not on hand to parry them, felt em¬ 
boldened by the presence of his father, who walked 
proudly beside him. 

“Content to let somebody else fight for you?” Walter 
' threw out. 

“Not at all,” Paul replied. “I always fight my own 
battles.” 

Walter could make nothing of this. “It don’t look 
like it,” he finally commented. 

“Looks are deceiving,” said Paul, surveying his old 
chum’s uniform. “Take yourself. Anybody would 
think you had been fighting—for me, as you put it.” He 
had a desire to punctuate Walter’s fraudulent heroics. 

“It’s lucky there’s nobody else around to hear you 
talking like that.” 

“Well, now that you’re back, Walter, all Hale’s Turn¬ 
ing will get a report of my words.” It was the only 
time he had referred to Walter’s propensity for gossip. 

285 


286 


SOLO 


“By Joe, if I hadn’t known you as a kid-” 

“You wouldn’t realize how beautifully consistent my 
attitude has been throughout,” Paul finished it. 

“Beautifully crazy!” interposed Mr. Dreer, with a 
snort. 

“As you decide,” replied Paul. 

“It’s not a time for fancy phrases,” pronounced Mr. 
Dreer severely. 

“Then why do you publicly indulge in them?” Paul 
inquired. He alluded to meetings in the town hall and 
at Bridgetown. 

“That’s my affair, sir. I’m too old to carry a gun.” 

“Yes, aren’t you glad?” 

“Damn you—your insolence has gone beyond the 
limit.” 

Paul’s wrath came to the surface. He had not sought 
the quarrel. “What do you expect of a crazy man?” 
he retorted, and strode away, leaving father and son 
to assure each other of their moral advantage. 

He knew he had gone beyond the limit this time—of 
discretion, if not of insolence. There were bound to be 
consequences; but he almost welcomed them. Anything 
would be better than the present negative status. Even 
the illusion of Phoebe’s support was gone. 

The sequel to the passage at arms with Mr. Dreer 
came a few weeks later in the form of a summons to 
appear before a special board in Halifax and explain 
alleged statements of a seditious character. Then only 
did Paul realize how many enemies he had made. Mr. 
Dreer, with the aid of his son and the Baptist minister, 
had compiled the evidence. There were records of con¬ 
versations with men in the shipyard—some of them fairly 
accurate, literally, but robbed of the context, lacking the 
ironical stress and the qualifying clauses that had 
characterized Paul’s utterances. Not once had he ad¬ 
vanced his views without provocation; not once had he 



SOLO 287 

sought to make converts. The charges seemed to him 
puerile and he listened with an air of aloofness. 

It was intimated that “things” would be “made easy” 
if he were willing to undertake certain missions for which 
his attainments specially fitted him. He declined the 
loophole. “It’s entirely a matter of principle,” he main¬ 
tained. Hence they did not make it easy for him. 

“And serve him right!” said Hale’s Turning, with the 
exception of Miss Todd, Mrs. Kestrell, Mrs. Barker, 
Becky States, Mr. Silva, old Silas and Phoebe Meddar. 

Phoebe, overcome by the shock, wrote a letter in which 
she diffidently, and between the lines tearfully, attempted 
to creep back, to reassure him of her continued faith and 
goodwill and love. On the bottom of the sheet he wrote: 

“The faith I’ll keep on trust, Phoebe. The goodwill 
is still more acceptable, for on the cultivation of that 
article the salvation of the world depends The love I’m 
sending back, dear, ever so gently, with your letter. 
You’ll have wiser uses for it.” 

Of all the messages he received, that from old Dave 
Ashmill struck him as being the most apt. “You 
have two big faults, boy,” wrote his former employer. 
“You’re too smart and too honest for your own good. 
Let me know if I can do anything.” 

Paul smiled cynically. Old Dave’s opportunism always 
prevailed over his generosity. That explained why 
Andrew Minas had died poor, when he ought to have 
prospered on just commissions for charters he had 
obtained for Ashmill. Paul knew that the patriot, Ash¬ 
mill, would not trouble to put in a word with the author¬ 
ities for a young man whom the profiteer, Ashmill, slyly 
admired. Simply because the shrewd profiteer had ob¬ 
served that his secretary had become be red with ship¬ 
building—as he became bored with everything in life that 
failed to add cubits to his spiritual stature. And old 
Dave, like most of the men Paul had encountered, was 


288 


SOLO 


more ready to pay a deposit on a new order than settle 
for goods already received. 

“Let me know if I can do anything for you.” That 
was what the world all generously said, whenever it was 
sure that one would be too proud to take it at its word. 

2 

Imprisoned and abandoned, Paul marvelled that any¬ 
thing so intangible as a point of view could bring one 
to such a pass—such an inevitable point of view, and 
such a phantastic pass! He disbelieved in martyrdom, 
yet knew that he would have been ready to make any 
sacrifice, even that of life itself, for his principle. He 
could only conclude that the issue had been after all a 
matter of life and death for him—the life or death of 
his individuality. He was still obsessed by the idea that 
he had something to express, in the sense that artists 
and thinkers “express.” Had he yielded to mass reason¬ 
ing and entered a fight which in no way touched his moral 
fibre, his message, he felt, would have been irretrievably 
lost. By sheltering the principles he had long nurtured, 
he hoped to bring his life to the point of blossoming, 
if not of fruit-bearing. 

As the months crept by, months during which medita¬ 
tion was an antidote to the hideously importunate reality 
of his surroundings, his past took on new meaning, and 
the dejection into which he had settled gave place to a 
sombre ecstasy as, bit by bit, he puzzled out a future of 
self-realization—made it out tentatively, hopefully, 
romantically. The watching and recording faculty, the 
warder of his thoughts and emotions, told him he was 
going through hell, and an idealizing faculty, their chap¬ 
lain, persuaded him that this was a necessary stage of 
his progress, that the fire would strip him of garments 
he had worn for the sake of convention. With this 
certitude to support him, the tension relaxed. 


SOLO 


289 


Often now, when lost in meditation, he recaptured the 
experience of “just being.” By holding his faculties in 
poise he could relapse at will into a state of trance through 
which came a radiant vision. The discordant forces of 
human nature redistributed themselves, producing a 
harmony so exquisite and so complex that the mind grew 
faint in trying to grasp it. The world revealed itself a 
transcendent instrument on which one’s life would be 
played as a mighty solo, without a false chord. 

From one of these trance-like abstractions he emerged 
to find a keeper staring at him. Paul returned the stare, 
wonderingly, and the keeper departed. From that mo¬ 
ment he was more closely watched. He concluded they 
suspected him of lunacy. 

When the exalted moods passed, he clung to the 
memory of his visions with the feverish tenacity of a 
man whose experience has been an alternation of ro¬ 
mantic expectations and brusque deceptions. This next 
adventure, towards which all his instincts, like tendrils, 
had been reaching forth since the dawn of experience, 
must not be bungled, lest the future become a descent 
into nothingness. He sought support in the poetry which 
had made an impression on his youth, but the odds seemed 
against success. Poets seldom got farther than passion¬ 
ately envying the happiness of skylarks. The youth 
whose motto was “Excelsior” mounted high, but in Alpine 
snows succumbed to his own fanaticism. Paul thought 
of himself as Wordsworth’s youth, “Nature’s Priest,” 
lured by the vision of immortality which had attended 
him as a child. Heaven had lain about him in his in¬ 
fancy; even yet he caught glimpses of an eternal efful¬ 
gence which gave him courage to defy the life of “sense 
and outward things,” But the poet warned him: 

“At length the Man perceives it die away, 

And fade into the light of common day,” 


290 


SOLO 


To make his “shadowy recollections” more tangible, he 
resorted to pen and paper, even though the transcription 
should be but a poor caricature. Then one day, as he 
re-read the pages, his heart stopped beating. He had 
detected an echo of youthfully exuberant letters from 
Aunt Verona to his mother—letters which had lain un¬ 
disturbed in old boxes for over forty years. Aunt Verona 
had seen visions and counted on realizing them. The 
future had lured her, hinted at benign auspices. But her 
future had turned out to be nothing but Paul’s early 
present—now his past! Aunt Verona’s light had gone 
out, leaving her in a fog of desolation, disease, delusion, 
and death. What assurance had he that his version of 
the truth was more authentic than those of his sweaty, 
psalm-singing fellow-convicts ? 

A mortal weariness seized on him, and he tore up his 
lyrical diary. 

3 

When the gates swung open he passed through with a 
mechanical nod of goodwill. He ignored the directions 
given by the man who closed the gates after him, and 
walked at haphazard until he came to a familiar grassy 
slope. 

Above him stretched the hill where he had sat and 
ruminated one autumn afternoon—the afternoon on 
which he had defied the gym instructor. From the citadel 
he had gazed towards ships in the roads, free ships that 
roamed at will in search of exotic havens. 

He was sorry for that far-away boy who had longed 
for freedom, only to learn that it entailed crushing obli¬ 
gations. The boy had shouldered them, earned his title- 
deeds, and when youth was gone handed the precious 
legacy to the man. The man in consequence was now 
free; his claim was beyond a shadow of doubt. And for 
that very reason the sight of noble ships lying at anchor 


SOLO 


291 


gave him, now, no sense of exhilaration. He thought 
not of their incomparable privilege as roamers; but of 
the dreary fate which buffeted them from harbour to 
harbour in a quest that was never fulfilled. Poor ships! 
Poor boy! Yet he envied, as well as pitied the boy— 
envied him his blazing faith in the treasures that lay 
beyond the horizon. Poor man! His faith nowadays, 
at best, merely glowed; often it lay cold and ash-buried. 
It might once more burst into flame—a flame that should 
serve as a beacon. But it would need the most delicate 
fanning. 

His eyes wandered over the soot-besmirched city. How 
sure it was of itself—like all things ugly. 

He took a deep breath, shrugged his shoulders, and 
walked down the hill, making for the office of his solicitor. 
Mr. Kingsley started up with an air of surprise and 
offered him an awkward greeting. 

“Well?” he finally inquired. 

“I’d like you to arrange for the immediate sale of 
everything I possess,” announced Paul. 

“Everything?” 

“Every square inch of land, every stick, every stock— 
the whole shooting-match.” 

“Won’t you explain your idea—I don’t quite see-” 

“You needn’t. You’ll receive the usual commission.” 

Mr. Kingsley winced, but took down Paul’s instruc¬ 
tions. 

“You plan to go away again?” he inquired, when the 
business was settled. 

“Yes.” 

“I suppose you’ll let us hear from you occasionally.” 

“Probably not.” 

Mr. Kingsley looked offended, then, with a sympathy 
which Paul dismissed as belated, left his desk and crossed 
the room to stand beside his client. “Look here, Minas, 
you mustn’t take this thing so hard. I knew your father 



292 


SOLO 


and mother, and I hate to see you let yourself grow 
bitter.” 

“Oh—you think I’m mad, I suppose,” Paul said, as 
though the possibility of the other man’s objecting to his 
scheme had just occurred to him. 

“Well, since you mention it, I do.” 

“Then, don’t waste your advice. Madmen must do 
mad things.” 

“Madmen-” Mr. Kingsley stopped short. 

“You were going to retort that madmen are usually 
locked up.” With a gleam of amusement he watched 
the elder man’s countenance which suggested embarrass¬ 
ment, anxiety and frustrated affection. “But you see,” 
Paul went on relentlessly, “that it doesn’t do us a particle 
of good. We only grow madder. It’s much wiser of 
you all to let us go unmolestedly to the dogs.” 

“Why ‘us all?’ You don’t suppose I had anything to 
do with bringing about the wretched trial! On the con¬ 
trary I did my best to defend you.” 

“I’m not ungrateful for your aid—even though you 
did maintain that my statements misrepresented my real 
sentiments. You didn’t realize, perhaps, that you were 
making me out a liar.” 

“Oh, look here now, Minas-” 

“Well, it doesn’t in the least matter. It’s over. Get 
on with the sale. If my property isn’t disposed of within 
a month I’ll give it to the poor, like the young man in 
the Bible.” And Paul went out and slammed the door. 

A few hours later he drove into Hale’s Turning in a 
hired car. Without useless preliminaries he set to work 
on the task he had allotted himself. With the aid of the 
chauffeur, he brought down his trunks and bags from 
the attic, then went from room to room making a rapid 
selection of objects to be packed, setting aside others for 
destruction, and taking an inventory of the remainder 
for the convenience of his solicitor. 



SOLO 


293 


Most of Aunt Verona’s possessions he burnt. They 
were not for the profane. He preserved only her music. 
Into his bags also went trifling objects which should 
remind him of boyish faiths and illusions—among them 
the lacquer box with its dead flowers. Phoebe, after all, 
had not come to see the bouquet. She must remain in 
ignorance of that episode, as Leila had remained in 
ignorance of the “secrets” he had planned to reveal to 
her. His life was a succession of fanciful projects which 
never got beyond a dress-rehearsal. 

The inventory was completed before dawn, and Paul 
lay down for the last time in the little room from whose 
walls Queen Victoria and Sir John Macdonald looked 
so forbiddingly forth. His life in Haleys Turning, 
where he had come to anchor, was ended—but what of 
the friends who remained? He would have preferred 
not to see them again. Whatever friendliness he had 
enjoyed had been offered to the image his friends had 
made of him, an image in their own likeness. His 
real self they had involuntarily shunned, or sought to 
edit. True, some, including Phoebe, had overcome the 
first shock and made timid advances. But he could never 
forget their shrinking. He could forgive—Lord yes, had 
forgiven freely, just as he hoped to be forgiven for 
having at times, in the groping past, been a sheep among 
sheep. The long hours of reflection had at least purged 
his soul of rancour. But after all he was a new man, 
and as such must be free of confusing associations. On 
his new pilgrimage, towards the very heart of life, his 
spirit’s meat, as the poet said, must be freedom, his staff 
must be wrought of strength—carefully conserved 
strength—and his cloak woven of thought. If there 
were to be friends—and he felt he was getting beyond 
the age for making intimate friendships—they could 
only be people who would accept him for what he was, 
not for what circumstances had made him appear. Now 


294 


SOLO 


that all veils had been discarded and his essential nature 
stood revealed, he would never again hide it from the 
world. Let thq, world react as it saw fit. Enemies and 
revilers there might be a-plenty, but he had plumbed the 
depths of any suffering they could inflict. They had 
sought to make him like themselves by locking him up, 
but had merely succeeded in confirming his incompatibility 
with themselves. 

For decency’s sake, and in order to reassure those who 
had been kind to him, he planned, in the morning, to 
make a round of farewell calls. Phoebe he would leave 
till the last, for she would be the most difficult—especially 
if she adopted an absolving attitude now that he had 
settled his account with society. That would be an in¬ 
tolerable weakness on her part, against which he must 
guard by an impersonal approach. He could find it in 
his heart to envy Wilfrid his insipidity. As a child 
Wilfrid had Gritty Kestrell to protect him. In his 
maturity, he would have Phoebe. And Wilfrid was of a 
mental and moral stature that Phoebe could manage, 
with energy to spare for the “improvement of her mind.” 
One couldn’t help feeling a little sarcastic toward Phoebe 
—in strict privacy. Gritty had said, “At least she’s the 
only girl in that God-forsaken hole with a nickel’s worth 
of brains.” That wasn’t the final word to be said for 
Phoebe, but it was wickedly near the mark. 

Sleep came at last, while his soul, like a kite, tugged 
pleasantly at his leaden body. His mind had gone beyond 
the farewells and he drowsily pictured himself in a train, 
speeding, speeding, towards infinity. Night drawing in, 
wheels grinding, the carriage swaying, the world rushing 
by: the globe, the stars, trees, men. Something infinitely 
precious, but dead, left behind. Life, a series of partial 
deaths, or of new creations; merely two ways of stating 
it. And at the heart of it all was a blessed stability; 
harmony, forgetfulness, peace. 


SOLO 


295 


4 

Three days later Paul arrived in New York and put 
up at the old Brevoort Hotel on the edge of “Greenwich 
Village.” Its suggested bohemianism and the mellow 
beauty of lower Fifth Avenue and Washington Square, 
red, blue, white, and gold in the glittering sunshine of 
autumn, soothed nerves fatigued by the insistent exhibits 
of a city which struck him as a permanent “world’s 
fair.” 

He engaged a passage on a ship sailing for Havre the 
following week, then booked a seat for a performance of 
Take it or Leave It, the revue in which Gritty Kestrell 
was appearing. Gritty’s name stretched across hoard¬ 
ings in red letters and winked at Times Square in electric 
lights. Her face, with its odd grimaces, its snub nose, 
blue eyes and hair of counterfeit gold, graced the cover 
of a smart periodical. She endorsed new beauty creams 
and published her advice to stage-struck girls. She was 
proprietress of a dancing establishment frequented by the 
fashionably fast. Joe Krauss had died and left her a 
fortune and there were hints that she was on excellent 
terms with the partner who had stepped into Joe’s shoes. 

Paul eagerly awaited Gritty’s first entrance. There 
were echoes of a vulgar brawl between father and 
daughter jon a landing, then Gritty appeared, made up as 
a “slavey,” her hair screwed into a knot, her sleeves 
rolled up, her long, twisted boots toeing in, her apron 
splashed, her skirt down at the back, bucket and mop in 
hand, staring aggressively off-stage. She set down the 
bucket, heaved a sigh, and ran out her tongue at the in¬ 
visible enemy. Paul chuckled. It was so like the tomboy 
of twenty years ago. 

Then she put her foot in the bucket and came tumbling 
down the stairs, head over heels, fetching up with a 
skilfully faked thump and an air of chagrin. 


296 


SOLO 


The secret of Gritty’s success was patent. On the 
stage she projected endearingly human qualities, adding 
a touch of the pert and the incongruous, her whole in¬ 
stinctive object being to make people like her. He had 
noticed that other women in the cast, more beautiful but 
less successful, walked on assuming that the audience 
must be overcome by their charm. Gritty took nothing 
for granted. She “worked” every minute, as he could 
see from the gestures and tone-shadings with which she 
drove home her first song. This ditty descanted upon 
the woes and hardships of an “honest hired girl” : 

“If you’re a char, 

And your pa(r) 

Blows your wages in a bar, 

You better throw yourself into the lake. 

For you can’t keep your honour, 

Your virtue is a gonner, 

If your pa(r) bags all your savings 

And you try to live on shavings 

And there’s nothing in your stomach but a ache.” 

It was followed by a dolorous dance in which Gritty 
made capital of her big boots and the long wet mop. 
She galumphed about the stage with an infectious sense 
of rhythm, while the gallery softly whistled the tune, then 
at the approach of the last bars she neared the wings, 
always neatly cavorting, and repeated the catch line. 
The “a’ ache”—the elision of the consonant—was the 
real Gritty, and the audience seemed to know it. 

In the interval he sent around his card and received a 
prompt reply: 

“You dear old darling. Talk about bolts from the 
blue. Come back after the show. Ask for Louis who’ll 
bring you to my dressing-room. You’re to have supper 
with me. Oh Paul three cheers.” 

For a week Gritty gave him all her available time, 
which in view of matinees, fittings, and visits to the 


SOLO 


297 


cinema studios, was limited. He found himself playing 
with her as a heavy-hearted man might play with a kitten. 
They were brother and sister again and took tranquil 
drives into the country in Gritty’s limousine, lunching 
at remote road-houses in Long Island or beside the 
Hudson. 

The five intervening years had brought rich experience 
to both. Although Gritty had gone far up the ladder, her 
success had been purchased at the price of hard work, 
nervous strain, and fierce intrigue. A new maturity 
underlay her playfulness. Paul found it strangely easy 
to talk to her. For all her prattling she was transparently 
sincere, and protectively affectionate. She knew men in¬ 
tuitively and through long observation. And he was 
more grateful for her approval of him than he would 
have been for the approval of a less expert woman, how¬ 
ever chaste. Gritty was the only human being with 
whom he had been able to talk without reserve. She 
combined two qualities rare in women: frankness and dis¬ 
cretion. She said exactly what she meant when her 
hearer was reliable; and was careful to say nothing that 
an unreliable hearer might repeat with damaging effect 

The only reproach he made to Gritty was her promis¬ 
cuity. “Nobody expects you to go straight, Gritty/’ he 
said, on the day before he was to sail. They were having 
tea at her flat in Central Park West. “But do be an 
artist in your affairs. I hated your association with 
Krauss, and I don’t think much of his successor.” 

“You’re mixing up my affairs with my business, honey. 
There’s a sharp difference.” 

“Well, don’t lose sight of the distinction, then, at any 
rate.” 

Gritty was suddenly cast down. “You’re so clear¬ 
headed,” she sighed. “I wisht I could have you handy 
to scold me often. But you’re going away to God 
knows where. Oh, Paul, there is one little streak in me 


298 


SOLO 


that’s worth all the rest, and you make me remember 
it. There’s something in me that could almost be a nun, 
if it got the chanst. But you can’t give up being a suc¬ 
cessful artiste to be a bum nun! If I could only be 
like you and have a thing called a destiny instead of a 
Broadway career—Gee!” 

“You can have a destiny, Gritty. The highest aim 
anyone can have is to share the destiny of the race. If 
you go on being generous and playing fair you will be 
keeping your candle burning and adding to the piteously 
inadequate enlightenment of this naughty world. The 
tragedy of it is, there are gigantic waterfalls of intel¬ 
ligence which might be used to generate enlightenment, 
but the world prefers its dark corners. . . . Oh, Gritty, 
life is so boundlessly potential. We could be gods and 
goddesses, if we knew what to do with our energies. 
Instead of which we snarl and haggle and lie and cheat 
and show off. We go round in circles instead of going 
straight forward, and then have the ignorance and cheek 
to claim intelligence! As an old carpenter on my first 
ship used to say, ‘men are more stoopid as animals.’ ” 

Gritty’s eyes dwelt on him trustingly, compassionately. 
He read some sort of vague inquiry in her glance, and 
it made him doubt himself. 

“One feels lost at times,” he said, with bowed shoul¬ 
ders, “and futile—like some dotty grandsire mumbling in 
a corner.” 

“Why don’t you be a writer?” Gritty asked. 

The question startled him. He thought for a moment^ 
then shook his head. “No, I can’t do it that way.” 

“Do what?” 

“I mean I can’t deliver my message by writing. I 
shouldn’t know how to drive it home with a pen. I’ve 
got to do it by impressing people with whom I come in 
contact.” 

“Oh, but that’s so vague—and inglorious.” 


SOLO 


299 


“Who's talking about glory, you poor little footlight 
moth! . . . Besides it’s not as vague as you think. 
The greatest messages the world has ever received have 
been spread by word of mouth." 

Paul’s vision suddenly cleared. “One thing is sure, and 
that is that I'll never be good for anything but spreading 
the ideas that have come to possess me. Like the Ancient 
Mariner I'm doomed to go wandering forth, stopping 
‘one of three’ . . . Do you remember the days. Gritty, 
when we had to spout that poem ?" 

“Do I! I was a rotten reciter—and here I am now, 
reciting every night of my life! Oh, Paul, darling, 
doesn't it make you feel chokey to think of those days 
and that odious little class-room with its smell of wet 
slate-pencils that squeaked, squeaked, squeaked, and 
geraniums at the window and coloured water and Miss 
Hornby's bottle of cod liver oil?" 

“And your pigtails!" 

“And gingham pinnies that I always came home torn 
in. And the spit-balls we used to shoot at each other 
with a elastic.” 

“And Wilfrid Fraser who always put his head under 
the desk when he blew his nose." 

“And the time John Ashmill held it under when Miss 
Hornby asked Wilfie a question. . . . And now—who¬ 
ever would a dreamt all that’s happened! Oh, Paul, it 
is a dream—no kidding. But I do v/isht I could have a 
aim like you, honest I do!" 

“Saves disappointment not to, dear." 

Gritty stroked his hand. “You so often look sad, 
honey—why?" 

“I feel sad—diffusely, almost paternally. I’m sad for 
the world, rather. As far as I’m concerned nothing 
matters. I’m too old.” 

Gritty gave a ringing laugh. “Baby boy! Why, 
you’re younger’n me, and I’m only thirty!" 


300 


SOLO 


“But I’ve lived harder—mentally. As a boy I was a 
sort of prodigy. And prodigies have a way of petering 
out.” 

Gritty snuggled closer to him on the settee. 

“There are people,” he went on, “whose lives are con¬ 
centrated in the span of a single generation. Sometimes 
I think I’m one of them.” 

She placed soft white fingers over his mouth. “Hush! 
Why, in a year or two when you’ve got used to your 
new ideas you’ll be all over your blues. Won’t you? 
Say yes.” 

A maid entered the room carrying a big pasteboard 
box. 

“Hats! Hats!” squealed Gritty, undoing the cord with 
eager fingers. 

She tried them on and forgot everything but the 
bright portraits she was making of herself before a 
mirror. Paul found them pretty, but his mind travelled 
back to a summer morning when he had seen Gritty try¬ 
ing on a leghorn hat trimmed with heliotrope ribbon, 
whilst Phoebe Meddar stooped to pick up a bouquet of 
tea-roses. 

He departed with a nameless sense of desolation. 
Gritty was the only friend left—the last on his list of 
farewells. And for all her amiability she was scarcely 
more than a makeshift: a misguided, vicious, pleasant, 
warm-hearted, promiscuous, vain, tender little make¬ 
shift. 

“Poor kitten,” he sighed, as he stepped into the street. 


PART V 


301 































XIII 


I 

For thirty years the world for Paul had been a bazaar 
stocked with covetable objects. But by the time he reached 
Paris the counters had lost their fascination. The youth¬ 
ful Minas had been wont to acquire recklessly, then 
discard, one by one, articles which proved worthless; 
the mature Minas took only what he was tolerably sure 
he needed. 

He had reached the point where a man rests on his 
oars, partly because his youthful vigour has subsided, 
partly because he finds the elusive reflections in the 
water more arresting than continual change of solid 
landscape, partly because he is curious to observe how 
other oarsmen will pull through stretches that have tested 
him. In Paris he found no lack of contemporaries at 
grips with issues which he had already settled for him¬ 
self. Everywhere he met youth who reminded him of 
himself a few years back, youths who were peering into 
odd corners in a restless search for their souls. Many 
were on false scents; nearly all were doomed to find a 
soul of smaller dimensions than they had taken for 
granted; some, soul-searching because it seemed to be 
the clever thing to do, were doomed to find nothing. 

Paul watched this game with a sort of tutelary interest. 
When he offered corroboration and encouragement, the 
searcher redounded in tributes to his insight; when he 
adversely criticized, the searcher cried, “But you don’t 
understand!” In either case, when the egoistic possibil- 
303 


304 


SOLO 


ities of the discussion had waned, the searcher turned 
back to his quest, regardless of the interlude, for, as 
Paul reflected, it is in the nature of youth that it must 
make mysteries for itself to solve, no matter how lucid 
a solution you lay before it. 

The situation was tinged with paradox. He, who had 
held his teachers in low esteem, had arrived at the age 
of thirty to find himself a teacher. His own long pro¬ 
cess Of self-searching had brought him to the pitiable 
conclusion that the purpose of his existence was to point 
out to other men the purpose of theirs! He could 
artistically think—which was to say philosophize—but 
he could not do. Whilst others performed doughty deeds, 
he must be content doughtily to theorize. Was that the 
splendid goal toward which one had so painfully striven? 
He wondered whether some such let-down were reserved 
for every man of thirty, or whether the let-down was 
evidence of his own futility. He classified himself as 
a creature—like countless other nondescript aliens in 
Paris—whose body was too heavy for its wings; or 
rather, a creature all wings and no body, consequently 
impotent against strong worldly winds. 

In any case a failure—except in a limited sense. High 
time, then, to acknowledge the limitations, and act within 
one’s role. He thought of Aunt Verona, his own mentor 
—Aunt Verona who, like himself, endowed with unusual 
gifts, had somehow lost heart and sought recourse in 
teaching, in preparing a prodigy for the destiny she had 
missed—a destiny which he, in turn, was to miss. 

The whole of his property had been realized, and when 
the final draft had been forwarded he withdrew the 
money from his bank and deposited it elsewhere, thus 
removing the last link between himself and the life he 
had forsworn. He had taken rooms at the top of a bare 
old house in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and passed 
for a student—a classification to which his habit of 


SOLO 


305 


bringing home second-hand books lent a colour of 
veracity. 

The first definite indication of his tutelary vocation 
came to him after a casual encounter with a young 
poetaster on the terrasse of the Cafe du Pantheon. It was 
an afternoon of late spring, in the year 1920. Paul had 
just heard in the Sorbonne a lecture on Will and its Role 
in the Universe, and stopped at the cafe to sip an aperitif. 
The professor’s theory had been incontrovertible. The 
world was what its inhabitants chose to make it. A world 
peopled by the pure in heart would revolve morally on 
its axis; the same world would revolve frivolously at the 
behest of knaves. Paul fatalistically accepted his status 
as that of a believer in I’univers moral , despite appalling 
evidence to the contrary. And the only honourable course 
was to live up to the belief—to go on, in the face of 
unromantic fact, performing romantic deeds. Such a 
course was impractical, foolhardy, catastrophant —to use 
a word of his own coining—but it might serve to redeem 
his failures. If only enough men turned angelic, earth 
would become heaven; and somebody had to make a 
start. 

As he mused, he observed a gaunt young man scrib¬ 
bling at the neighbouring table, in a corner that might 
once have been occupied by the needy Verlaine. His 
face was drawn and his grey eyes seemed to envisage 
defeat. His clothes were threadbare, but he was clean, 
whereas he obviously belonged in a category of vision¬ 
aries who, like Verlaine, their prototype, were usually 
dirty. Paul saw in the youth a promise which was in 
danger of belying itself, a brittle spirit which life might 
easily snap. Another example of the wretched species 
—the creature all wings. 

At length the youth set down his pencil and looked 
away from his bescribbled sheets and empty glass. Paul 
leaned toward him, addressing him in English. 


3°6 


SOLO 


“Do you mind if I see what you’ve written?” 

The young man shrank. “Not at all,” he finally re¬ 
plied, shoving the sheets to the edge of his table. 

Paul’s curiosity had been aroused by a blend of in¬ 
tensity and fastidiousness that reminded him of himself 
in days gone by. As he read, this impression was con¬ 
firmed, for the poem evoked one of his most familiar 
moods: 


“Golden wine before me, gold-green trees, 

An orchestra of voices, 

Siphons, 

Chaos merging into yellow warmth, 

Satiety. 

A yearning to lament, 

Exquisite, 

Gains me. 

Yet what may I lament save surfeit? 
Surfeit not of sense, 

But of a self unshared, 

Unsharable. 

That leaf among its mates! 

Ephemeral ? 

Less so than I, who, brushing every land, 
Am at the bidding of capricious winds 
Which it knows to resist 
Until due Autumn claims it. 

I, human leaf, 

Have learned 

That leaves once fallen 

Never regain their branch; 

And, till a new wind stirs! 

Rest here, 

Peering through golden bubbles, 

Summer trees, 

Into a radiant vault 


SOLO 


307 


Where, one by one, pale monitors emerge 
And say: 

‘Here is the bourne you seek, 

The object of your nameless pilgrimage/ ” 

The poet’s thoughts proceeded far afield, lured by a 
romantic gleam. Paul read to the end and handed back 
the sheets. 

“You/ve always expected a good deal from life, haven’t 
you?” he finally commented. 

The youth reflected. “I dare say. But life led me 
on to expect a good deal. If you’re born with an imagi¬ 
nation, life puts notions into your head.” 

“But sooner or later people with imaginations must 
learn to prepare themselves for the meagreness of what 
life can give. They can’t, of course, cease expecting, 
but they can, while greatly expecting, reconcile themselves 
to the inevitable little.” 

The poet shrugged impatiently. “I despise compro¬ 
mise. For me it’s everything or nothing.” 

“What will you do if it’s nothing?” 

There was no reply. 

Paul smoked in silence. Gradually the youth’s eyes 
came round to him again, filled with a new-born doubt. 
The impatience was gone. “Would you say,” he began, 
“after reading these silly verses, that with me it’s likely 
to end in—nothing? Was that what you meant?” 

Paul weighed it. “No. I merely wished to startle 
you into the thought that some sort of compromise may 
be inevitable. ‘All or nothing’ is a brave banner to rally 
one’s forces under—but few men can keep it aloft.” 

“Life’s damnably hard,” said the poet, and the remark 
was obviously more than a platitude. 

“Of course it is. That’s why I suggested the wisdom 
of considering its niggardly terms. In that way one to 
a certain extent disarms life. By yielding on the score 


3°8 


SOLO 


of sordid fact, one conserves energy for the promulga¬ 
tion of one’s private version of the truth.” 

“But that’s cheating!” 

“If you leave all the cheating to fate, what ghost of 
a chance have you to survive!” 

“There are destinies more glorious than mere sur¬ 
vival !” 

Paul smiled sympathetically. “I used to think so— 
passionately. Now I honestly wonder.” 

“Oh well, just because you’ve lost faith is no reason 
for expecting me to!” 

“Certainly not.” This was sincere. “If you can win 
the battle I’ve lost, so much the better As it is, I’m 
cheering for you—albeit half sceptically.” 

The youth for the first time was lifted from his ego¬ 
istic morass. “I say!” he exclaimed. “I believe your 
sceptical warnings are worth more than some men’s 
headlong partisanship. You really have been through the 
mill, I dare say.” 

“I have, and it grinds, exceeding small. That’s why 
I wish to help you.” 

The poet had a twinge of conscience. “Oh, let’s forget 
me. I was spoiled as a child.” 

“Then, no wonder you expect so much!” 

“I do expect a lot, God help me!” 

“Even from God!” Paul laughed. 

“Rather only from God. Mortals can’t do much for 
you, except in the way of food and clothing.” 

“That’s something.” 

“You mean it’s more than I’m disposed to acknow¬ 
ledge?” 

“Yes.” 

Paul watched the sensitive mouth harden in scorn for 
a poverty which was imminent and abject. 

“What are your plans?” he asked after some 
desultory talk. 


SOLO 


309 


“I don’t know. Paris has lost its glamour. One can’t 
help feeling that somewhere one will find one’s level. 
I’ve thought of Austria. The Philistines at home have 
said so much against our former enemies that one feels 
they must harbour rare virtues, as does everything the 
Philistines decry! Do you know Vienna ?” 

“I spent two years there—before the war.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

“I daren’t, for I was young. Consequently I look 
back at my sojourn through a treacherously romantic 
haze. You might do worse than go there, if only for 
the sake of storing up impressions upon which you, too, 
can look back sentimentally in days to come. For half 
the joy of life consists in passionate recollection.” 

Paul paused a moment, then said: 

“Do let me send you to Vienna. I can supply you 
with enough to keep you going for a year or 
two.” 

Instinctively the youth drew back. “It’s very kind 
of you, but of course it’s out of the question.” 

Paul was impatient. “I gave you credit for more con¬ 
sistency,” he said. 

“What do you mean?” 

“My offer in no way reaches your pride—or, if it 
does, then your pride is an impertinent intruder upon 
your idealism. You profess to be an ‘all or nothing’ 
idealist, yet you hold back because of a scruple bred in 
a sphere of society where ideals are ignored, like the 
drains.” 

The young man was impressed, and visibly tempted. 
“But I can make no return,” he temporized. 

“I’m not offering gifts to you, you fool,” retorted 
Paul. “I’m subventioning your soul. Your soul is only 
a facet of my own, of the universal soul. If you starve, 
the cause of enlightenment is retarded by so much— 
that is my misfortune as well as yours ” 


3 io 


SOLO 


“It sounds cogent—but I should feel that I had taken 
a selfish advantage of your generosity.” 

“Isn’t that my lookout? If I have faith in you, you 
can’t have less. Besides, are you so sure I’m not at 
heart an 'all or nothing’ man? What if my idealism 
can only be expressed in such ways as the material fur¬ 
therance of other men’s idealistic efforts—will you ob¬ 
struct it?” 

There was a pregnant pause. “Do you realize what 
a thankless mission you’re setting yourself?” asked the 
poet. 

“Perhaps some day you’ll ask yourself the same ques¬ 
tion.” 

The youth sighed. “I’ve even done so already.” 

“Eh hien, treve d’explications! If you’ll be here at 
this hour to-morrow I’ll have the money for you.” 

Two days later Paul made the following entry in a 
fitful diary he had begun to keep: 

“Saw George Paddon, the poet, off to Vienna. His 
haggardness gone, his eyes lit up with a prodigious 
expectancy, poor devil! But at least he won’t expect to 
find gold cobblestones there, as I did. Strange that, of 
all the questions he might with profit have asked, he 
asked none; and strange that he, like most others, should 
choose the one question I will never answer: 'What is 
your nationality ?’ ” 

2 

For the next three years the diary continued at 
irregular intervals to reflect Paul’s life. No mention was 
made of his routines, his readings and his return to a 
half intensive, half dilettantish preoccupation with music, 
nor of his donations to the needy students, painters, 
musicians, and writers who kept crossing his path. The 
entries mirrored picturesque elements in his surround- 


SOLO 


3ii 

ings which stung him into a philosophic reaction. The 
charities, for the most part quixotic, went on as long as 
his small fortune lasted. 

Following are extracts from significant entries: 

“Drawing-room in Passy, Nov. 5, 1920. Luigi Pes- 
saro says he lives for and by virtue of music, yet his 
rose-festooned piano, under my fingers, is out of tune, 
and neither he nor his mother nor the Principessa seems 
aware of it. Moreover, he has just sung a Scarlatti 
ditty and sentimentalized it out of all conscience. Then 
how account for that opera score there, inscribed by 
the composer himself, a ‘cordial souvenir to a magnificent 
artist?’ Was Massenet sub-consciously thinking of the 
artist’s eyes! And are all composers as fallible as Mas¬ 
senet? Did a certain ‘vieux musicien’ sub-consciously 
think of Aunt Verona’s eyes when he waxed eloquent 
about her performances? As one grows older one grows 
into the habit of believing by contraries. In a way that’s 
novel and refreshing; gives one a sense of living one’s 
past backwards.” 

“Night cafe, rue St. Marc, 4 a.m., December 3, 1920. 

“Last night Suzy showed me two snapshots of her little 
boy in the country. She swore her only reason for being 
in such company in such a place at such an hour was 
the necessity of providing an education and prospects 
for her baby. She wept and leaned her blond head on 
the beer-stained table and finally tucked the photographs 
into her powder-dusted bag among notes from a legion 
of lovers. I half believed her, ‘lent’ her fifty francs 
again, for luck, and helped her on with her satin cloak 
when the- American lieutenant invited himself to her 
apartment. She danced her way out, wreathed in smiles. 

“To-night, or rather this morning, a chauffeur and a 
market porter went home with Suzy, and the pcttvoufie 


312 


SOLO 


says Suzy will give them somewhat more than the pro¬ 
ceeds of the American’s liberality, despite her overdue 
rent. In the light of that fact, what becomes of Suzy’s 
emotion apropos of the snapshots? More to the point, 
what becomes of the education and prospects of the 
little boy in the country? Still more to the point, when 
shall I learn to distribute my fifty-franc notes to good 
purpose?” 

“Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, May 20, 1921. 

“Last night, wandering far afield, I found myself in 
a deserted street on Montmartre. Abruptly, out of the 
buried past, came the palpable forms of Lord Henry 
Shroton and his lady. With them a sister of Freddy, 
Elsie Shroton, exceedingly pretty. If Gritty had only 
known, that last night, that Freddy would be shot down 
before the year was out! 

“We proceeded to an expensive restaurant for dinner. 
Through mazes of comfortable talk, I heard scraps of 
fact concerning motor routes in sundry corners of 
Europe, gossip about old acquaintances. How lucky, 
observed Lady H., tentatively, that I hadn’t been killed 
in the war! Ominous silence. Then we went to a haunt 
where the niece’s desire to be shocked could be decently 
gratified. She sipped a liqueur on my recommendation, 
with sidelong violet glances from under a stretched-silk 
hat brim, and poor Cora watched me, her drooping, 
cynical lips seeming to say, Ts that then, your type?’ 

“On leaving them I strolled away to a dingy studio 
in an alley on the side of the Butte and sought out Karl 
Zurschmiede, the little Swiss who paints. With him 
was an anarchistic Italian-American who has roamed the 
world on ‘freight cars’ and cattle boats and who has 
visions of becoming a second Jack London. At present 
he shines shoes on a boulevard and secretly hopes some¬ 
body will write a story about it for the supplement of a 


SOLO 


313 


New York Sunday newspaper! So much for the quality 
of his soul. He made vindictive accusations against the 
bourgeoisie which grated on my nerves. Middleclass 
people grate on my nerves equally when they make vin¬ 
dictive remarks about Labour. He gives me the impres¬ 
sion of having deliberately chosen to pass his life shining 
shoes, riding under railway waggons, sleeping in the 
open, and snarling at the bourgeoisie for keeping him 
starved and consumptive. I helped him, but felt that his 
object in life was to arouse sympathy simply that he 
might have a theatrical occasion to say, ‘Damn you 
and your pity!’ And when he departed, tucking his 
complaints into his cud, the little painter sidled out of 
his constraint and showed me a series of sketches which 
proclaimed a painful struggle towards an individuality of 
expression, which he is scarcely likely to achieve. 

“We chatted in a dim candlelight, surrounded by rags 
and tags, dusty windows, a dilapidated bed and wet 
canvases, including an agonizing Christ flanked by a 
Barrabas who suggested a boozing taxicab driver. 

“Flavouring it all was Karl’s thickish, German-Swiss 
French, his shiny, round, plain features, his gentle eyes, 
his simple, warm, considerate sincerity. Not once did 
he complain of his penury, his chagrins, his amorous 
betrayals, nor boast of his gift—he merely stated 
them all, laying his emotions one by one on the table in 
a hope that I, practised in speech, would build them into 
an edifice for him; and I did, like a house of blocks for 
a child. Then he guided me down the steps, through 
the alley, and I particularly remember the warm, dry, 
compact stubbiness of his hand, as we parted, the deter¬ 
mination in the line of his jaw. The greenish light from 
a street lamp over his shoulder made a circle around 
his dimple, and he anxiously told me what to do for my 
cough. There was a daub of chrome yellow on his nose 
and he wore no collar. 




SOLO 


“I walked home, diametrically across Paris, still keyed 
up as an effect of the brightness and friendliness of the 
Shrotons, but mellowed by having acted as Father 
Confessor in a dingy studio; and I pondered many 
things. 

“Earlier in the evening I had stopped at the Rotonde 
to drink coffee, and repelled the overtures of a Swedish 
cinema actress trying to ape the make-up and manner 
of French tarts—why, God knows! And on my long 
journey home I had stopped in the Rue St. Marc to have 
an omelet and a cup of coffee beside a mixed group of 
thieves, gaming crooks, journalists, public ladies includ¬ 
ing Suzy, and other noctambules, where the patronne 
gives me credit and relates the peripeties with which 
patronnes of blackguardly resorts have to contend. 

“The point, is, I don’t know to which category I, by 
nature, belong: to the facetious, aristocratic and opulent, 
or the starkly, grimly, obstacle-ridden idealistic. I like 
good cheer at a scintillating table surrounded by the 
socially and sartorially impeccable, the playfully-minded 
leisure class—I shouldn’t, but I do. Their point of view 
is unaccountably familiar and natural to me. I disap¬ 
prove of the Bolshevist fellow’s shallowness. I dis¬ 
approve even of Karl Zurschmiede’s griminess, of his 
cluttered floor, of his uncomplaining acceptance of 
squalor. Yet I instantly respond, for, as he would 
modestly say of a well-drawn sketch, c Il y a du car act ere 
dedans / and I know I would forego many a good dinner, 
many a reunion with old acquaintances who show me off 
at my most amiable, in the interest of the principle that 
makes the young Swiss, for instance, struggle on in the 
hope of being able one day to paint a Christ that won’t 
look like half-melted putty.” 

“Night cafe, rue St. Marc, 4 a.m., July 8, 1922. 

“ ‘You remember that woman who was sitting in your 


SOLO 


315 


corner here yesterday morning ?’ asks the patronne, and 
I have to think back to the dawn before. 

“ ‘She was short, thick, black with wildly disordered 
hair, rouge-daubed cheeks, a dirty blouse, stubby fingers, 
magnificent teeth. She was drinking little glasses of 
rum, and reminded one of a gay, hearty murderess. She 
was thirty-seven and had just been beaten by a boy of 
eighteen whom she seduced five years ago. She showed 
me the bruises and told me how brutal he was—and 
laughed, a wickedly infectious laugh. She said life was 
a long series of deceptions. Her young lover forced her 
to give him money, and spent it on others, and yet she 
couldn’t do without him; and she laughed, and I laughed. 
She said at that rate her lover would end by stabbing her, 
or she would stab him, and we laughed and laughed, 
until the tears came.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I remember her.’ 

“ 'Ben, mon petit, she’s desperately in love with you. 
She came back here last night with diamonds in her 
ears, to find you. She says she can’t do without you. 
She showed me a roll of hundred-franc notes with which 
she proposes to tempt you. She was in a terrible 
state.’ 

“ ‘Did she laugh when she confessed herself?’ 

“ ‘Laugh! She was filled with nine thousand green 
devils, and each one was shrieking with laughter.’ ” 

“Night cafe, rue St. Marc, February 1, 1923. 

“After an absence of months I stopped in to listen to 
the patronne’s latest peripeties. On my last visit Suzy, 
in the name of sweet respectability, ‘borrowed’ twenty 
francs. She told me she was going to Rouen to attend 
the marriage of her young sister and was ‘making econo¬ 
mies’ in order to put up a good front before the family. 

“Heavens knows what Suzy has done in the mean¬ 
time, but the patronne assures me that the agents broke 


SOLO 


316 

into her flat and caught her red-handed. As a result 
Suzy’s curls are drooping in the prison of Saint-Lazare, 
and the family at Rouen will have one more mysterious 
silence to add to the long list of gaps in their general 
information about Suzy. 

“Her little dog has been taken in charge by her friend 
Berthe, who once pulled out half Suzy s back hair in 
this very room. He seems disconsolate, as though he 
knew Suzy were languishing. It reminds me of a ditty 
which Luigi Pessaro used to sing: 

‘Son chien sur la fougere, 

Assis nonchalament, 

Du mieux qu’il pouvait faire 
Disait, le regardant: 

L’amour me fait languir, 

Lon la! 

L’amour me fait, 

Lon la, 

Me fait mourir.’ ” 

“Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, September 5, 1923. 

“Across the court there lives a girl whose hair is the 
colour of new copper wire. Sometimes she hangs her 
gloves at the window to dry in the sun. Sometimes she 
sits there polishing her nails. Every day she sketches 
at a life class in the Rue de la Grande Chaumiere around 
the corner. When we meet in the court, or on the terrasse 
of the Rotonde, she nods without smiling. I bore her. 
Her name is Germaine. Her ami is a medical student 
who wears loose collars and baggy trousers. Late at 
night, when the concierge’s gate clicks open in response 
to Germaine’s knock, her friend crawls through beside 
her on all fours, so the concierge won’t see him through 
the window. Germaine is more careful of her reputation 
than most girls who ‘go in for’ art. 

“Her sketches are rather less than mediocre, and she 


SOLO 


3i7 


must know it. Why will women waste time in search of 
a soul they don’t possess, when all they need do, to be¬ 
come incandescent, is to hold themselves before the light 
of a man’s soul—the right man! At her best a woman 
is a vacuum tube reflecting in rays of dazzling violet, the 
spiritual current passed through her; at her worst she’s 
a chameleon; when she tries to be the spiritual currents, 
herself, or the dye-stuffs, she’s either a mannish woman, 
or just a fraud. Good women there are—the world 
abounds in them—but they smother you. Conscienceless 
women are fascinating, and if you’re not wary you be¬ 
come addicted to them. The others simplv pass by in 
indifferent clothes, indifferently made up. 

“The Germaine who has imbibed enough feministic 
theories to be useless to herself and the world goes daily 
to the sketch class. The girl who sits polishing her 
nails in the sun is the real Germaine. I can’t be bothered 
with the former, but I catch myself peeking through my 
window rather too often for a glimpse of the latter.” 

“Rue N. D. des C., November 28, 1923. 

“It has been a day of little running waves of imagin¬ 
ative pleasure checked and drawn back into the ocean 
of fact by an undertow of fear. Illness has something 
to do with the palpitation—but not everything. 

“I’m on a threshold and dare not cross it, lest the 
abode prove dark, cold and bare in contradiction to its 
alluring exterior. I’m grateful to be able to forestall 
desolation by stating it in this way. Many people haven’t 
the anaesthetic of words for their aches. While reason 
points out the circumstances conspiring against an en¬ 
during friendship with the woman who obsesses my 
vision, my emotions are flowing towards it in a cascade, 
and one might as well try to cure a drunkard as try to 
cure me of emotional excess. It’s useless to offer me 
the substitute tisane of studio gregariousness and hail- 


318 


SOLO 


fellowship for the potent distillation of passionate com¬ 
panionship, flavoured with loyalty. That intensifies life, 
brings oblivion of minor cares, creates an illusion of 
energy and health. Yet it belongs to a category of 
things I’ve forsworn. The old Adam dies hard. And 
Eve, this time, ascended my rickety stairs, not with an 
apple, but with a packet of thermogene! 

“What deft fingers, what a way of tucking in blankets 
that always slide off in the middle watches, what a voice 
to let oneself sink into—a voice which laves feverish 
thoughts like a cool river. Hair of glowing copper sil¬ 
houetted against my brown walls! Some suggestion of 
j a de—the eyes. Translucent jade—a risky amulet 

“Like the drunkard I’m sorry for myself in a maudlin 
way, but don’t wish to be cured. I want earthly love 
once more, only once. I want it neat. Yet with the 
glass before me, inviting, I m afraid. Courage, I know 
only too well, will come with the first sip, the treacher¬ 
ous courage that bears you on the crest of warm waves, 
mounting, roaring, rolling with an irresistible momentum, 
the courage that abandons you at the impact, leaving 
you numb and weak for the arduous recovery.” 

“Rue N. D. des C., January 19, 1924. 

“A convalescent torpor, grey clouds and wet pave¬ 
ments, an unheated hovel and a cough, growing penury 
my own fault, but no matter—and the thought of having 
to commence some routine of daily-breadwinning. I 
feel as though my soul, as well as my body, had had 
an attack of double pneumonia. 

“I can fight any number of odds and win, if the odds 
will do me the favour of being above-board and aggres¬ 
sive. But if they are insidious and passive, if they are 
merely sandbags, mines, and entanglements, I have no 
resource but to lay down my firearms and ardently en¬ 
visage the state of affairs I would substitute. 


SOLO 


319 


Germaine desires to see Italy and Greece. She has 
saved my worthless life. The return is small enough. 
We may manage it on my balance at the bank. If we 
can’t—well, one might as well try conclusions with the 
gods in Athens as in Paris.” 

“Lake Leman, February 2, 1924. 

“A few months ago I was telling the patronne of the 
blackguardly cafe in the Rue St. Marc that I longed 
to escape the blights of a northern winter. When I 
coughed she recommended her most expensive liqueur! 
A few weeks ago I was tossing and turning in delirium 
in the ugliest and coldest little room in Paris. To-day 
I am sitting on the deck of a white steamer on a blue 
lake, gazing at sun-gilded, snowy mountaintops, breath- 
ing air which stings like rum. Germaine is throwing 
cakes to the birds and watching them swoop into the icy 
water. 

“A few miles away is Clarens, the enchanted bosquet 
of Rousseau’s Julie and St. Preux. Byron and Shelley 
once came to visit it. Poor silly pilgrims.” 


“Hotel Porta Rossa, Florence, February 18, 1924. 

“For her the picturesque, the romantic, the idealistic 
are elements with which life is garnished. For me they 
are the dish, and the garnishing is what is commonly 
known as fact. ‘I’m so glad it’s you who are taking me 
on this trip,’ she says. Which merely means that the 
excitement of travel is for her the present dish, and my 
society the garnishing. Somehow I was unable to tell 
her that her society is the present dish for me, that Italy 
and Greece and a whole geography-full of lands to be 
traversed are merely the garnishing, and even over¬ 
seasoned for my present strength; for she should know 
it. 


320 


SOLO 


“This morning, while Germaine stayed in to polish her 
nails, I rode in a dusty tram-car to the summit of Fiesole. 
There I saw pointed hills ringed with gardens and stroked 
with cypresses, and a Roman theatre whose ruined walls 
were bescribbled with communist slogans. Roses and 
oranges tranquilly flourished near, as they flourished 
when the walls were built. 

“I also saw a cab-horse whose tail had grown thread¬ 
bare through long service in swishing off flies, while 
bracing himself for the ascents of Vallombrosa. His 
master had tied on a new tail with red ribbon, but it 
hung motionless from a weary stump. For Dobbin had 
come to the dispirited conclusion that fine tails do not 
make fine horses. I have a presentiment that he will 
lie down on a steep hill and die before the summer flies 
arrive. Then that luxuriant false tail will be untied 
and combed and reutilized, and Dobbin will be cast into 
a pit and covered with earth. ‘Vcmitas vcmitatum serait 
bien le fond de tout!’ 

“We’ve been looking at lovely, long, bent-necked Botti¬ 
celli virgins, and to-morrow we pack our bags again. 
Whither is it leading? I’ve gone far enough on the path 
of self-realization to know that the life of a man bent on 
that supreme adventure is like a cake, with highly- 
flavoured little accidents for raisins, and soft, leavened 
loneliness for dough. It’s baked in an oven of intense 
meditation, and some one, presumably, will eat of it. 
Will anyone smack his lips in the eating of my cake? 
I fear it will be done to a cinder.’’ 

“Hotel Helvetia, Rome, February 27, 1924. 

“Cold airs are creeping in under the doors of the abode. 
And just what can be the status of this man who has 
turned up again—the man with whom she danced in the 
Kursaal at Geneva? Is he garnishing or dish? A little 
‘high’ I should imagine, whichever.” 


SOLO 


321 

“Pensione Grimaldi, Capri, April 18, 1924 Five 
weeks in bed. By this time Germaine and her captivating 
(literally enough) dancing man must be well on the way 
to India. After all, she wished to see strange lands! 
One can almost be thankful she ran away when she did, 
for if she had seen the present collapse she might have 
remained out of pity—which would have been intolerable. 
As it is, she has even a sense of moral advantage—at 
a stretch of imagination which she is equal to. The fact 
that I failed to keep pace with her up that beastly hill 

the mountain of Tiberius—will remain for her an 
evidence of sulkiness on my part. For all her former 
care of me, she had forgotten the doctor’s warnings. 
If one were cynical one would wonder whether she ever 
listened to them. 

“My only quarrel with Germaine is that she didn’t pay 
me the compliment of being honest—I think that’s the 
only quarrel I have with anybody. But the boat was 
ready to leave for Naples and, even if she had had a 
vision of me prostrate on a deserted mountain path, 
there was no denying the fact that our funds were run¬ 
ning low. The other man had to catch his steamer to 
Port Said. Opportunity knocks only once. Germaine 
answered. Grand, bien lui fasset At least she’s not 
spoiling perfectly good canvas! 

“I’ve been less clever than Germaine I’ve sent word 
out to Opportunity, in the phrase that Aunt Verona 
taught me: ‘He’s not at home.’ That, she said, was 
one of the few fibs in the world that might be told, a mere 
faqon de parler. A grim fagon, on the whole—sinister 
and symbolic. Opportunity doesn’t call nowadays; knows 
it’s useless; and I’ve only to crawl back to Paris. It’s 
just possible that one day even Germaine, if she makes 
a good thing out of life, will look back and say, ‘He 
wasn’t a bad sort; he once gave me a leg-up.’ But if 


SOLO 


322 

she plays her cards wrong, she’ll say, ‘It all started with 
him; if I’d only stuck at my sketching!’ 

‘‘One’s life is at best a melody soaring above the dis¬ 
sonances of life, but even the worst solo has some coher¬ 
ence, a beginning and a logical end. It doesn t just trail 
off— surely.” 


XIV 


I 

By easy stages Paul made his way northward through 
Italy, putting up at the cheapest pensions , resting in vil¬ 
lages innocent of tourists, following in the wake of 
spring, overtaken by summer. The illness which had 
struck him down proved stubborn, and there were inter¬ 
vals when he was too weak to pursue his wanderings, 
when he could do little more than lie exposed to the sun, 
frightening away with a stick the lizards that scrambled 
up gorse-covered banks and darted between the hot flat 
rocks. 

His objective was Paris. The thought of its neurotic 
atmosphere daunted him. Yet he was drawn back. He 
could only explain the urge on the ground that he had 
failed to fulfil there some mission which he had been 
predestined to fulfil, though in his present state the idea 
of hoping to fulfil any mission seemed the wildest 
mockery. 

His past was a series of abdications. As a child he 
had been impelled forward by the vision of fulfilling a 
musical destiny he had, as it were, inherited from Aunt 
Verona; but his inability to do this had become patent 
in Vienna, the scene of her moral defeat. As a young 
man he had been lured on by the wonder and splendour 
of spiritual initiation; but the hard kernel of his ego 
had remained opaque when subjected to the rays, except 
for a few blessed moments. In the manner of a resigned 
323 


324 


SOLO 


loser, he had indulged a last hope, the hope of squander¬ 
ing his unproductive experience on others, and thus sow, 
as Aunt Verona had done in his case, seeds of truth in 
soil which seemed propitious; but even in this role he 
could credit himself with only the most dubious success. 
And, with such aims, to have blundered into the bog of 
passion for a woman with eyes like risky amulets! Verily 
he was a prophet a la manque. 

Despite which the old injunction still haunted him: 
Have faith in yourself, and nothing on earth can prevail 
against you. Only now, after many years of obedience 
to it, did he realize the sinister corollary: “If you have 
faith to the nth. degree in yourself, the universe will 
virtually consist of yourself, consequently, however badly 
fate may serve you, you’ll be able to say that nothing 
is prevailing against you, since, naturally, you can’t pre¬ 
vail against yourself.” Therefore, in a sense the un¬ 
deniably true formula was a snare and a delusion, but 
even if he had been duped by it, he was past caring. In 
rebellious moments he could almost find it in his heart 
to wish that Aunt Verona had never existed. She was 
the only idol that had remained intact. Were she to fail 
him, life would indeed have been a wilderness. 

Of all his misadventures, the one for which he found it 
least easy to excuse himself was his addiction to Germaine. 
He had had several months in which to review the affair, 
and marvelled that he could so completely have hood¬ 
winked himself. By some freak of womanliness she 
had taken it upon herself to nurse him, and under a spell 
he had lavished on her the pent-up emotions of a lifetime 
devoid until then of overmastering passion. His amours 
had been confined to the comparatively large class of 
women who make the mistake of assuming that they 
are indispensable to the men they covet. Germaine, if 
vastly inferior to these women in worth, was more crafty 
than they. “Any woman could do as much as I have 


SOLO 


325 


done, and more,” expressed her attitude, and as it was 
the plain, hard truth, men, as they must, misinterpreted 
it as the rare flower of womanly modesty. 

It s a waste of time for you to fall in love with me; 
besides Raoul, although he is a pig, needs me, and you 
don’t; for you’re clever and I’m not.” 

That is what she said to him, and had doubtless re¬ 
echoed to the third man. In consequence she had in¬ 
flamed him, whose nature it was to crave and magnify 
what seemed beyond his reach. He had not stopped to 
ask why she had devoted herself to him. It had been 
sufficient that she had done so. Now, as he looked back, 
he gave a new importance to the fact that she had re¬ 
garded him—whatever other feelings she may have en¬ 
tertained for him—as a man who could feed and clothe 
her for the time being. Then, as he had made his slow 
recovery she had talked of her frustrated longings for 
an education, her desire to see the world—and he had 
taken her troubles au grand tragique. What a situation 
for a man who had presumed to lead youth in the way 
it should go, who had so confidently pointed out pitfalls 
to others! Ah yes, but in their cases he was not blinded 
by his own febrile passion. The most wise and sober 
of men were not proof against madness where their own 
affairs were concerned. 

It was over now, and he would never feel again—in 
that particular way. It was a relief to know it. Germaine 
now stood merely for the memory of a bad investment 
—the worst of many doubtful ones. Some might yet 
show a dividend. The young poet, George Paddon, for 
example, might end by upholding the torch toward which 
he, Paul Minas, a sort of philanthropic foolish virgin, had 
contributed a little oil. Paddon, according to a letter 
now several months old, seemed to have found his level 
among a group of budding philosophers and poets—neo- 
somethingists. 


326 


SOLO 


By the time Paul had made his way as far north as 
Siena, his funds were at a point which made imperative 
the most rigid economy. Having no head for figures 
he could not account for the fact that he had, in less 
than five years, disposed of a sum that should, under wise 
manipulation, have provided him with an income for 
life. For life! He smiled at the phrase. What with 
incessant coughing, perspiring through the night, waking 
with shiny eyes, and funking every steep hill—the hand¬ 
ful of francs still in one’s possession might last a “life¬ 
time.” 

He thought of the young sailor who had hoarded his 
savings, year in and year out, for the sake of a holiday 
in Germany. Paradoxically, in those days he had not 
known the value of money. Now he knew. Money 
existed for the purchasing of one’s ideals—whether the 
ideals consisted in fine raiment or the subsidizing of 
needy visionaries. Paul had had money to spend, and 
spent it. Not a sou had he begrudged. Not a purchase 
did he regret. Not even Germaine, for she had taught 
him something, if only the extent of his own 
fatuity. 

He arrived in Paris on a rainy day of September, 
1924. He had spent a sleepless night on the wooden 
bench of a third-class compartment, and caught a fresh 
chill from the bad air and the draughts. By the time 
he had collected his scanty possessions from the entrepot 
and moved into a fifth-floor lodging in a dingy street 
behind the Gare Montparnasse, he was in the grip of an 
illness which he knew to be dangerous. Of all his former 
acquaintances there was no one he cared to send for, no 
one he could trust to do the right things, without asking 
questions or offering advice. He craved companionship, 
yet he was relieved to think that no one could find him 
in this retreat. For two weeks he lay in bed obliged to 
submit to the attention of a fumbling old physician whom 


SOLO 


327 

the concierge had sent up, and retarding his recovery by 
worrying as to how he was going to pay the bills. 

His first venture out of doors was an excursion to the 
stalls along the quays, where he sold an armful of his 
best books for a tenth of their value. 

Once he thought of looking up friends to whom he 
had made advances in the past, on the off-chance that 
their fortunes, unlike his own, had taken a turn for the 
better. But the suggestion was vetoed by the very pride 
for which he had righteously scolded so many others, 
when they had shown a reluctance to accept aid at his 
hands. After all, he had invested in their talent, and he 
had no talents of his own deserving subvention. Besides, 
the men he had helped—at least in the best cases—had 
not actually asked; they had simply accepted what he had 
guessed they needed. Would anyone guess he needed 
help? Perhaps, but he was under no illusion as to the 
amount of help likely to be voluntarily offered. Tant 
pis. He had known that a day of reckoning must come. 

At the night cafe in the Rue St. Marc he found a 
disconcerting welcome. The patronne who had always 
regarded him as her most distinguished client, received 
him with open arms, but only after she had stepped back 
with an expression of consternation on her face and 
a fervently uttered, “Grand Dieu du Ciel.” For a mo¬ 
ment Paul was unnerved. He had not realized that his 
appearance had altered to such an extent. 

For the next fifteen minutes he was engaged in an¬ 
swering Madame’s questions. Then she went to the 
kitchen herself to prepare food for him. The night was 
not far advanced, and the regular gathering of com¬ 
positors, van-drivers, thieves and fly-by-nights had not 
arrived. Paul had hoped to see Suzy, whose favours 
he had declined, but who was indebted to him for many 
a loan. Suzy, for all her depravity, would heartily 
welcome an opportunity to do him a good turn, if she 


328 


SOLO 


was in luck. When he had finished his meal he men¬ 
tioned her name to the patronne, who treated her own sex 
with uniform contempt. 

“Oh, Suzy never comes here now. She’s living up in 
Montmartre somewhere. She owes me thirty francs— 
sale gribiche qn’elle est! They’re all alike, ces filles. . . . 
But your great amoureuse still comes.” 

“Who is that?” 

Madame reminded him of the murderous, mirthful 
hag who had been prepared to bid for him with rolls of 
hundred-franc notes. 

“She always asks about you.” 

Paul shuddered. To-night the thought of his admirer 
was not even funny. He turned up his collar, and rose 
from the bench. 

“Qa ne fait rien, Madame, si je vous paie la prochaine 
fois?” 

“Mais quand vous voudrez, mon petit, quand vous 
voudrez. Ici vous etes toujours chez vous. Vous le 
savez bien!” 

He thanked her and shook hands, in accordance with 
the etiquette of the establishment. The dirty floor and 
the stale smells of tobacco and beer nauseated him. 
Madame had just served to an unsuspecting customer 
a steak of horse-flesh. In the fat surrounding his own 
potatoes, Paul had been obliged to remove the corpse 
of a fly. He hurried away. 

“Here, you can always consider yourself at home,” 
she had said. Home! 

2 

There was only one direction in which Paul could 
turn for an immediate livelihood. Through the centre 
of all the shifting emotions of life, music had run as a 
dull gold thread. He would have preferred not to de¬ 
grade it to the status of mere breadwinner, but there was 


SOLO 


329 


no alternative. He thought of becoming a professional 
accompanist, as he had done in Vienna, and with this 
idea in mind sought out an acquaintance of four years 
back, Luigi Pessaro, a man of ample means who had 
taken up singing as a hobby and whose art was reserved 
for salons. 

Pessaro received him with the dismayed countenance 
that Paul had grown to expect. For once, however, his 
altered appearance stood him in good stead. The singer, 
shocked into action, took him to Monsieur Sariac, a 
teacher at the Conservatoire. 

Monsieur Sariac heard Paul play with evident interest. 
“With your temperament,” he finally commented, “you 
strike me as a virtuoso run to seed. You’ve missed your 
calling. You have more to say than the average soloist 
for whom it will be your duty to efface yourself.” 

Paul shrugged his shoulders. “There comes a time,” 
he replied, “when one has no desire so strong as to 
efface oneself. I am seeking a livelihood, not a career.” 

Monsieur Sariac was unable to offer him employment, 
but promised to recommend him in various quarters. 
Then, as Paul was on the point of leaving, an idea struck 
the elder man. 

“Do you by any chance play the organ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then I may possibly be able to help you. It’s a very 
unusual post.” 

Paul sat down again. It was a question of going three 
or four times a week to play for a harmlessly deranged 
old gentleman—an aristocrat and an exile—who lived, 
closely guarded, in a house off the Boulevard St. Ger¬ 
main. When Paul had assured M. Sariac that he was 
not deterred by the singularity of the situation, the teacher 
gave further details, binding his listener to respect the 
confidence. 

“The old man lives under the delusion that a woman 


330 


SOLO 


long dead is at his side—a girl with whom he was 
violently in love, but who vanished on the day he killed 
his wife.” 

M. Sariac paused to watch the effect of his words, 
then reassured, went on. “The crime was committed in 
an access of insanity brought on by the hopelessness of 
the love affair. M. de Reisenach, as he is called, fled to 
Paris, but was overtaken by couriers, who found him 
raving. To avoid a scandal it was given out that he was 
dead and, with the connivance of the authorities here, 
it was arranged that he should be installed in a private 
house. The house is, of course, nothing more than a 
private asylum, and for many years its inmate has per¬ 
suaded himself that he is living in clandestine happiness 
with the woman he loved. Naturally he sees almost no¬ 
body from the outside world, and whoever penetrates 
into the house is obliged to humour him in a dozen subtle 
ways. . . You see the difficulties of the post?” 

Paul was fascinated by them. “What makes you think 
I might qualify?” 

“Ah ga! How does one know such things? There’s 
a quiet intensity in your manner that makes me feel you 
might appeal to the old man—if you care to undertake 
the task. Of course he may turn you down at sight. 
There’s no accounting for his judgment.” 

“Has he nobody to play for him?” 

M. Sariac’s face became grave. “For the last twenty 
years my wife went regularly to play for him—my wife 
died only last week.” 

Paul filled the hiatus with an expression of sympathy, 
and M. Sariac descanted upon the qualities of the unfor¬ 
tunate lady. 

“If you are interested,” he finally said, “I’ll take you 
to M. de Reisenach’s secretary.” 

Paul felt that the offer lay peculiarly in his province. 

“There is a further warning,” concluded the teacher. 


SOLO 


331 


“Like most deranged men, M. de Reisenach has periods 
when he believes himself watched by spies. You will 
have to exercise great tact.” 

“And the remuneration?” 

“It is modest, but if you succeed in pleasing the old 
gentleman they will be liberal. When my wife died I 
received a charming letter and a cheque for twenty-five 
thousand francs.” 

Two days later, on a crisp afternoon of November, 
Paul was ushered into an enormous salon. A tall, white- 
haired man of seventy, dressed in correct morning clothes, 
turned at his approach. Paul found a pair of large blue 
eyes searching him. Lips half defiant, half appealing, 
pronounced a courteous greeting in French which be¬ 
trayed a trace of accent. 

Then, turning to an empty arm-chair which was drawn 
close to the fire, M. de Reisenach said in tones at once 
ceremonious and affectionate: 

“My dear, let me present to you Monsieur Minas, a 
friend of our good Sariac. He has come to play.” Then 
with a quick motion, M. de Reisenach turned and pierced 
Paul with a suspicious glance. 

But Paul had been rehearsed, and was bowing gravely 
to the imaginary occupant of the chair. 

The old man’s face relaxed in a smile. “My wife 
adores music,” he explained. “Though I, too, am fond 
of it, in my ignorant way. It was very good of you 
to come to us. We are dull old fogies.” 

“On the contrary, Monsieur, it is a pleasure to be 
invited to play for appreciative hearers—and in such a 
room.” 

For half an hour the old man exhibited his treasures, 
explaining their history and artistic worth. At the end 
of the room in a large alcove stood an organ built of 
dark carved oak, its pipes rendered as inconspicuous as 
possible by a decorator who must have deplored their in- 


33 2 


SOLO 


trusion into the scheme. Near the alcove stood the most 
beautiful piano Paul had ever seen—of glowing black, 
inlaid with metal in a pattern that corresponded with 
other pieces of furniture in the room. M. de Reisenach 
himself lifted the lid, and motioned Paul to the keyboard, 
then retraced his steps toward the fireplace. A footman 
advanced silently and wheeled the vacant arm-chair 
round so that the back of the imaginary woman would 
not be turned to the guest. For the first time since he 
had entered the room Paul thrilled to the uncanniness 
of his surroundings. He had experienced no difficulty 
in bowing to the chair, or in casting polite glances in its 
direction, but the footman’s matter-of-fact attention to 
a non-existent mistress sent a shudder through him, and 
he had to make an effort to steady his nerve. 

For an hour he played, gaining confidence as he went 
on. The old man dozed through it all. The piano re¬ 
sponded graciously, and Paul rose to his best heights. 
It was as though he were desperately trying to disprove 
M. Sariac’s frank comment: a virtuoso run to seed. 
And the old man dozed on till a clock warned Paul that 
his time was up. 

He left the piano, and his host, roused by the cessation 
of sound, got up to meet him. 

“Ah, Monsieur, I cannot tell you how much we have 
enjoyed your music. You will come again, will you not 
—often?” 

Paul breathed a sigh of relief. “You are very kind, 
Monsieur.” He turned to the arm-chair and said, with 
a bow, “Bonsoir, Madame Then he shook hands with 
M. de Reisenach and left the room. 

3 

As the winter wore on, Paul settled patiently into his 
new mode of existence. With lessened vitality had come 


SOLO 


333 


a simplification of interests. From a daily routine which 
would once have dejected him by its lack of variety he 
now derived as much stimulation as his chastened organ¬ 
ism could endure. He had no grievances, no wayward 
hopes nor goading ambitions to disturb the tenor of his 
mind. In the mornings—often after nights of pain and 
insomnia—he awoke with a sense of security. Outside 
his window, in the streets, beyond them, in outlying vil¬ 
lages and fields, stretching in circles which infinitely 
widened, life hummed and purred its course in myriad 
activities each of which contributed to a compact pro¬ 
tective total. For life was protective; it afforded susten¬ 
ance and comfort in subtle ways, meting itself out in 
portions nicely adjusted to one’s capacity. 

Paul had progressed beyond the stage of exacting 
boons from life, consequently could at last appreciate 
boons which came gratuitously, could revel in diluted 
rays of sunlight which more sturdy souls cursingly ac¬ 
cused of meagreness, could feel deep thankfulness for 
food and drink which to others seemed frugal, could find 
solid worth in creatures whom the world voted dull. 
Without picturesquely striving—as the devotees of a 
hundred cults strove—he had unexpectedly achieved, as 
they expressed it, peace. He made no boast of it, took 
no false credit for it. Simply his soul was in equipoise. 

For this long coveted state he had paid heavily—but 
he was able to face the bill without a tremor. 

The lonely ache which had always shadowed him was 
gone, yet in spirit he now stood farther aloof from the 
world than ever. Friendship and companionship were 
as far beyond his reach as if he were an invisible figure 
on the earth, though he moved among men who passed 
for friends and companions. Love in a personal sense 
he would never experience again; its place had been 
pre-empted by an emotion which reached out in all direc¬ 
tions, knitting the universe together in a warm garment 


334 


SOLO 


which he wore as a mantle over his soul. For thirty- 
five years he had been a slave to his egos, then, as in the 
case of the Ancient Mariner, his stubborn heart had 
yielded without warning, and the weight of his mistakes 
and failures had dropped into the sea at his feet. 

One of the first signs of his spiritual freedom was the 
magnetism he unconsciously exerted. In the old days 
the rare homage of his fellows fed his vanity. Now it 
increased his humility. Night after night in a modest 
restaurant on the Boulevard Raspail, he found himself 
the centre of a heterogeneous group of students and 
artists. Former acquaintances sought him out and, 
having found him, came back again and again to lay 
their problems before him. Karl Zurschmiede, the 
painter, the American-Italian tramp of literary and anar¬ 
chistic leanings, Paddon, the English poet fresh from 
circles of radical opinion in Vienna, were among the list. 
And a prominent figure in the growing confraternity was 
a young French Jew, Philippe Bloch, whose essays on the 
theory of relativity, concerning which speculation was 
rife and comprehension uncertain, were winning attention 
for him in serious reviews. 

Each member of the confraternity, with the exception 
of Paul, was driven by some demon. Each was bent 
on entering controversial lists to vindicate the honour 
of some theory on which he might base a scheme of 
life. Each was obliged to argue at length and with heat 
in order to find out what he believed. And through the 
kaleidoscope of colours that would not blend, in the wars 
that surged round the names of modern personalities and 
movements, artistic, political, scientific, religious, Paul’s 
impartiality became the refuge of all parties. He sel¬ 
dom supported an applicant with an axe to grind, but 
he usually restored harmony by his faculty for reducing 
all problems to a common denominator, his faculty for 
eliminating inessentials and raising the issue to a plane 


SOLO 


335 


beyond the reach of disputation. He was not known to 
have any special subject, though he was described, 
vaguely, as a musician. And he seemed to have no pan¬ 
acea for the ailments of the world, unless his views on 
internationalism and the fundamental unity of all re¬ 
ligions could be thought of as such. 

On a few occasions Paul had emerged from his im¬ 
personality in some sudden onslaught, some appeal for 
tolerance, some championship of the despite fully used. 
In such moments he had expressed himself with a fervour 
that gripped his hearers, and it was on account of them 
that he had begun to acquire the status of a prophet. But 
for two reasons he curbed such effusions. In the first 
place he felt that his most valuable contribution to life 
lay in his ability to exert a tranquillizing rather than a 
stimulating influence. In the second place the concen¬ 
tration entailed in propounding a difficult thesis, in preach¬ 
ing and converting, took a heavy toll from his physical 
resources, bringing on disorders which he could ill afford 
to encourage. 

One evening in March, 1925, intoxicated by the de¬ 
ceptive warmth of a spring-like night which seemed to 
presage a summer of infinite bounties, a future of glo¬ 
rious opportunity, Paul threw precaution to the winds. 
He had been absorbing life in small, diluted doses. To¬ 
night he craved a more potent draught. The soft strong 
air from a window opening on a row of evergreens laved 
and quickened him. The lights, the buzz of familiar 
faces, the distant murmur of a world awakening from 
winter sluggishness filled him with a throbbing joy, 
made him feel twenty-one instead of half the allotted 
three score and ten. He tingled to the incomparable 
privilege of living, gave thanks for it, gloated over the 
treasures that lay within the reach of himself and his 
kind. He had an impulse to rouse the world to a sharper 
wonderment, a more electric vitality. To-night he knew 


336 


SOLO 


himself for a superior being—superior not in the sense 
against which he had chafed as a boy, when Mrs. Kestrell 
placed before him her finest linen, but superior in his 
comprehension of the infinite insignificance of himself 
and of all men as individuals, in the puissant totality of 
life. With flushed cheeks and shining eyes he seized the 
reins of discourse and drove it furiously, increasing the 
pace as each man and woman showed signs of catching 
up. 

In the background he saw the proprietor rubbing his 
hands. 

Paul found himself talking of the soul, of its arduous 
journey through the valley of the shadow, of its imprison¬ 
ment in the body and its subjection to a mind which 
sought to argue it out of existence, of its incessant strug¬ 
gle for liberation, encouraged by a presence merely felt, 
as a brushing of wings, or merely glimpsed in flashes 
of celestial light, of its ultimate emancipation at death. 
He deprecated the unnecessary strife within the trinity: 
soul, mind and body. His plea was for order, co-ordi¬ 
nation, poise, harmony. Religion, he said, any sort of 
religion, even that of maniacal evangelists, was an es¬ 
sential part of life, necessary as a sort of tuning-fork 
that gave human beings the right “pitch,” according to 
which they might live without flatting. 

Then the talk swerved round to the topic on which he 
was known to have expressed views that savoured of a 
past bitterness. Never had his conviction that national 
barriers were a heritage from barbarous days, that the 
progress of civilization depended on a pooling of human 
interests, been so succinctly, so vehemently and inspir- 
ingly set forth. “La parole est a Orphee,” cried Philippe 
Bloch, who sought to maintain a sort of parliamentary 
procedure in these discussions. “Orpheus” was a nick¬ 
name conferred on Paul in jest by his acknowledged 
disciple, George Paddon, and it had caught. 


SOLO 


337 


For an hour Paul talked, foretelling the new heaven 
and the new earth illuminated by a unified religion, im¬ 
pelled forward by the concerted energies of a unified 
race. He suggested, in imaginative flights, ways and 
means of making it feasible, appealed for support, spec¬ 
ulating, affirming, convincing. Through it all he was 
exultingly conscious that this, at last, was the essence 
of his famous message. A message neither startling nor 
original, but grand, with a grandeur that could only be 
measured by the intensity with which it was projected, 
the zeal with which it inspired those who were destined 
to carry it into the highways and by-ways. His ego was 
not delivering the message; the message was being de¬ 
livered through it, by a power as much greater than him¬ 
self as winds are greater than the ships they drive across 
the ocean. He was free from self-consciousness now as 
he had never been—not even on the far-distant occasion 
when, as a precocious cabin-boy, he had evoked the spirit 
of Beethoven and caused it to speak, through him, to a 
roomful of seamen. The difference between the two 
occasions was that to-night he was able to bring the force 
of experience, reason, spiritual exaltation, moral fervour, 
and impassioned words to bear on his audience—an 
audience, moreover, of virtual disciples, predisposed to 
accept the message which was being transmitted through 
him. 

Of all the faces that crowded about him, Paul was 
conscious of only one steeled against his appeal. The 
Italian-American vagabond, a man who, born perverse, 
had let his mind become distorted still more by disease 
and hard-usage, and then become enamoured of his own 
distortions, had from the outset of their acquaintance 
shown a personal antipathy, an antipathy which Paul, 
loath to argue with an insincere man whom he had aided, 
had taken no pains to break down. When Paul brought 
his impromptu speech to an end, the anarchist waited for 


338 


SOLO 


a lull in the hubbub, and then, with a cynical laugh, threw 
out a challenge which he had obviously been saving. 

‘‘How do we know you’re speaking in good faith? 
For all anybody knows to the contrary, you might be a 
spy in the employ of a government that has something 
to gain by your kind of propaganda, preached outside its 
own boundaries. Are you afraid to show your papers?” 

Although the speaker was not popular, and although 
in its present mood the confraternity would have taken 
Paul’s side against anyone, an undercurrent of curiosity 
awaited with interest the fate of the challenge. 

Paul had no intention of gratifying this curiosity, nor 
of evading the challenge. 

“I make a secret of my nationality out of sheer con¬ 
sistency,” he replied quietly. “To my way of thinking, 
the fact that nobody here can say for a certainty what 
country produced me is a vindication, in a small way, 
of my thesis. If everybody had tried to ignore national 
prejudices as consistently as I have done, we should find 
ourselves able to co-operate in ways which are now in¬ 
feasible. ... I’m not afraid to show my papers—the 
suggestion is silly. But I don’t mind telling you that 
I’ve served a term in prison for the views I’ve been 
advocating, if you need any proof of my good faith.” 

A few short years ago he would have been tempted 
to give a cynical flourish to this final piece of informa¬ 
tion. But he had outgrown his cynicism. 

There was a stir of renewed interest, and Paul went 
on to link up his remarks, bringing the audience again 
under his sway. Gradually his words dwindled. There 
was a singing in his ears which drowned the sound of 
his voice. He was suddenly oppressed by the thick smoke 
that filled the room, and reached towards the window, 
which someone had closed as the night air grew colder. 
Paul knew now that he had shot his bolt. The strange 
buoyancy he had experienced earlier in the evening had 


SOLO 


339 


departed, leaving as a sort of echo an inward turbulence. 
He was too exhausted to decide whether the turbulence 
was emotional or physical. 

He shivered. The draught from the window brought 
him out of his thoughts. He had a vague premonition 
of impending trouble, and felt he must find a pretext to 
go home. 

Before he could close the window again, he was cough¬ 
ing. His cough was well enough known by this time, yet 
many eyes turned to him with quick sympathy and fear. 

He had only one thought now—to control himself 
until he could get out of the room, away from every¬ 
body. He rose from his chair, and some one darted 
forward. Why should Karl look so panicky ? Paul tried 
to deceive himself with the question, then gave it up. 
Self deception wouldn’t work; he had tried it before. He 
sat down again, racked in a cough that was past con¬ 
trolling. He had once thought of buying a red hand¬ 
kerchief to carry against such emergencies. Had he 
done so, his acquaintances would merely have laughed 
at his conversion to Bolshevism. As it was—there would 
be a scene—and his speech would be forgotten in the light 
of this more impressive, useless phenomenon. His genius 
for anticlimax again. 

Zurschmiede and Paddon got him to his attic room, 
and Bloch arrived shortly afterwards with a doctor. 

The three young men took their leave. As Paddon 
opened the door some loose sheets of paper fluttered 
from a table. Believing them to be a copy of an essay 
which Paul had forgotten to return to him, he mechan¬ 
ically thrust the sheets into his pocket. Later in the 
evening, by the light of his own candle he read what 
seemed to be an entry destined for a diary: 

“Rue N.D. des C., March 14, 1925. Since my soul 
insists. I give it up to a soft breeze which mysteriously 


340 


SOLO 


stirs in all this wintry stench of mid-Paris, and bears it 
to the bourne of my life-long pilgrimage which I shall 
always vaguely discern but never reach. The sea is 
there, amethystine; a shore of crisp velvet sand, deserted; 
sweeping green banks; a sweetly melancholy, faint rustle 
of leaves; deep-hued flowers discreet in number, for each 
has its individuality; not one is superfluous. 

“Silence composed of infinite soft sounds, as whiteness 
is composed of infinite colours. A terrace, high windows 
flung open, a glimpse of spacious rooms which my soul 
can enter when night falls. 

“Music which comes from the flowers or from within 
me and pervades the afternoon but has no locus. Music 
and perfume which mingle, which gently thrill, which 
stir the curtains of the high windows, the foliage of 
trees, music and perfume which give life to the sea air, 
which like interweaving recitatives hover above the 
ocean’s rhythm. 

“And a presence felt, guessed, but not seen: a radiant 
figure so perfectly unlike, yet so strangely like me, for 
it has a beauty I have ever coveted. It comes and goes, 
brushing me invisibly in its flight. It is young, fresh, 
eager, iridescent, suddenly languid, suddenly animated, 
suddenly visible, splashed with the blue-purple-green of 
the water, the yellow of the sunshine, the green of the 
trees, the red of the flowers, a red that throws off glints 
of orange and purple like rubies. The figure is echoed 
by a rhythmic fragrance, perfume that comes in a pattern. 
Its movements are determined by, or determine my music. 
It has the fragility, the grace of a vision, yet it makes 
me conscious of my body, stirs my veins to new measures. 
It mocks and challenges, and the music and perfume 
deepen to riot, and I am running to its urge, leaping, 
pursuing, nearing, touching draperies of gossamer, catch¬ 
ing laughter tossed to me like bubbles, capturing, sub¬ 
duing, at the music’s dictate. 


SOLO 


341 


“In my arms the vision takes life from me, leaving 
me but a soul. The enchanted laughter under my lips 
becomes a healing caress. My eyes, for the fullness of 
seeing, close. The ethereal figure which was beautiful 
is now a part of me, a supplement. With it I am become 
the universe. The music has grown so full-toned, it is 
beyond hearing, just as my eyes in the fullness of seeing 
merged into the vision and ceased to see. The music 
has become as great as the universe; it is the vesture 
enveloping the universe which I, by uniting with my 
fleeting vision, have become. With the fullness of feel¬ 
ing we have ceased to feel.” 

4 

Paul was warned by a specialist that he must leave 
Paris at once and seek some mountain resort. 

“But it’s a luxury I can’t afford these days,” said the 
invalid. 

The specialist held open the door of his consulting- 
room. “Alors, mon pauvre ami, unless you do as I say, 
life itself is a luxury you can’t afford.” 

The remark took Paul’s fancy. “That’s what I’ve 
been telling myself for many a year,” he replied. 

He walked into the bright April sunshine and directed 
his footsteps toward the Luxembourg gardens. Under 
a canopy of trees on which budding leaves shot forth 
like green flames from gas jets, lolled students wearing 
black hats and red neckties, idly addressing themselves 
to books and sketch-blocks. He pushed on towards the 
round pound, where children were sailing boats, and 
paused to watch them, marvelling at their obliviousness 
of the doom that overshadowed them. They were as 
exuberantly unconscious of their sad mortality as the 
hyacinths were unconscious of the rain-cloud encroach¬ 
ing on the blue and golden glories of the afternoon sky. 

He left the park to the innocents who infested it, to 


342 


SOLO 


the God-blessed and the God-spared, and walked on 
through the gates past the Odeon, down the hill through 
narrow streets toward the river. When the shower de¬ 
scended he took refuge inside the doors of a book-shop. 
One volume attracted his attention, for it contained an 
account of the life and teachings of Orpheus. 

“ 'Rugged is the road which leads to the realm of the 
Gods/ said Orpheus, who seemed to be replying to voices 
from within himself rather than to his disciple. 'A 
flowery path, a sharp slope, then rocks haunted by 
thunder-bolts and surrounded by the immensity of space 
—that is the destiny of the seer and the prophet on earth. 
Let thy feet dwell in the flowery pathways of this world, 
my child, and aspire not to go further/ 

“ ‘My thirst but increases the more as thou seekest 
to quench it/ said the young disciple. ‘Thou hast taught 
me the secrets of the Gods. But tell me, great master 
of mysteries, thou who wast inspired by divine Eros, 
shall I ever be able to see them?’ 

“ ‘With the eyes of the soul/ replied the pontiff of 
Jupiter, ‘but not with those of the body. At present 
thou canst see merely with the eyes of the body. Only 
by dint of long travail and great pain may the spiritual 
eyes be opened/ ” 

Paul thought of his disciples, of Paddon, who had con¬ 
ferred on him the name of Orpheus. He skimmed 
through the pages and came to the end of the dialogue: 

“ ‘Thou hast earned the crown of initiation, and thou 
hast lived my dream/ concluded Orpheus. ‘But let us 
depart from hence; for in order that fulfilment may 
come to pass, it is necessary that I should die, and thou 
shouldst live/ ” 

On the point of buying the volume with the few re¬ 
maining coins in his pocket, Paul was deterred by a per- 


SOLO 


343 


ception of the irony of the situation. What purpose could 
be served by his absorption of the contents of one more 
book? What purpose, for that matter, had been served 
by the omnivorous reading of thirty years? Books had 
nourished his mind as bread had nourished his body. 
But why should either have been nourished? In a few 
months or weeks or days, the one would be under the 
ground and the other would have vanished God knew 
where. An echo of war-time phraseology recurred to 
him —spurlos versenkt! 

Perhaps this volume, after all, could throw a glimmer 
on the probable destiny of one’s spirit. One might read 
it on the off chance that it would impart a smattering 
of spiritual etiquette, in case there were some sort of 
conscious survival after death. He bought the volume, 
and went out again into the cold sunlight of the rain- 
splashed street. 

He passed cafes where men were sipping pleasant con¬ 
coctions, passed stalls heaped with fruits, heard scraps 
of good-humoured talk, caught glimpses of fresh cheeks 
and keen eyes. What a pity to leave it all behind, what 
a pity beyond the range of tears and chagrin! What 
incredible and meaningless extravagance, que la vie! 
Thirty-five years of seething and frothing like a busy 
bubble, then, instead of floating off, as a bubble should, 
towards some Empyrean, one merely relapsed into the 
illimitable ocean—the river with but a single bank. One’s 
iridescent personal bloom, a mere reflection, vanished 
with a little plop, and one dispersed as air and water. 
The arch-anticlimax! It was not that one resented being 
merged into the reservoir of life; it was simply that one 
endlessly wondered why a complicated system of bubbles 
should have been ordained. Did they, perhaps, make it 
possible for a greater quantity of oxygen to be dissolved 
into the water for the benefit of fish—and if so, what, 
in the metaphor, corresponded to fish? 


344 


SOLO 


Why seek to purchase a prolongation of life? Would 
one be warranted in begging for the wherewithal to tarry 
among stalls heaped with fruits, streets running over 
with traffic, gardens filled with children, young and 
grown-up? Besides, could one cheat fate with money? 
Into his head came the ominous air from Carmen he had 
hummed one night more than ten years ago: “Si tu dois 
mourirrecommence vingt fois; la carte impitoyable 
re patera la mort.” 

He wandered along the quays, nodding to booksellers 
of his acquaintance, and at the Gare d’Orsay turned into 
a street leading to the closely guarded house of M. de 
Reisenach, where he was due at five o’clock. 

The old man greeted him with the customary show of 
hospitality. Paul bowed as usual to the empty arm¬ 
chair, exchanged the usual remarks about the weather, 
sat at a tiny table laid for three and drank tea poured out 
by a servant, since “Madame” had “an aversion to pre¬ 
siding over her table.” This explanation was invariably 
repeated. 

Paul had forgotten whatever horror he had first ex¬ 
perienced on hearing of the crime committed so long 
ago, and felt strangely in sympathy with the motives 
that urged M. de Reisenach to persist in his realization 
of a wildly extravagant ideal. Paul entered into the 
madman’s psychology and played his part in the other’s 
life-long drama with a facility that gave him cause to 
question his own balance. The measure of his sanity, 
he concluded, was merely the measure of his failure to 
realize his chimeres. Paul recalled a sentence of a 
favourite writer: “Cette forme est reelle f puisqu’ elle est 
apparente et qu’il n’y a de realite au monde que les appar- 
ences ” M. de Reisenach’s visions were real to him. He 
was to be envied. 

Paul’s long walk had fatigued him. The strong tea 
made his cheeks burn. He felt his body frail against 


SOLO 


345 


the soft upholstery of the chair. In a mirror he saw a 
reflection of his face—a flushed ivory setting for two 
black jewels. That very morning he had seen a para¬ 
graph in the Paris edition of an American newspaper 
stating that Miss Gritty Kestrell had arrived at the Rite 
for a visit of some weeks, and he could not go to her, 
for he was unwilling to subject her to the shock of his 
emaciation. 

Within him, beneath a little singing restlessness of 
nerves, there was a deep tranquillity. 

Monsieur was speaking of music. It was time to drag 
oneself from the chair. He marvelled that a body so 
thin could be so heavy. Monsieur was asking him to 
play the organ for a change. If Monsieur only knew 
how fatiguing the pedals were, how hard one had to press 
down the keys! 

Once seated on the bench, Paul’s energies rallied. He 
played a Pastorale of Cesar Franck’s—a thing of quiet, 
gentle, austere beauty, reflecting a loftiness of spirit, a 
sincerity and nobility that refreshed and inspired. 

Although he had drawn away from it at intervals, 
music still expressed some truth he had always sought 
in books and in life itself yet never quite attained. It 
was strangely satisfying, yet it stirred a longing for fuller 
revelation. 

From Franck he went back to older masters, and 
found himself playing Bach fughettas he had not heard 
since childhood. Once more he was the small boy per¬ 
forming his solo while the pennies fell with a chink into 
baize-lined mahogany plates. Once more he was playing 
for Phoebe Meddar—not the ladylike schoolmistress, but 
a pale blue, pale pink, pale gold and lavender Princess 
of Alcantara who knew no language but the ethereal 
language he made for her with his music. Once more 
he identified his life with the melody—he was the voice 
which rose yearningly above the complexity of opposing 


346 


SOLO 


voices. Again he thought of life as a series of variations 
on a given theme. His had surely passed through 
enough. Further variations could only be anticlimactic. 
Yet it was so difficult to know when to stop. 

His strength had come back as if by magic with his 
absorption in the music. His body was forgotten, he 
was again the creature all wings. What if he endeav¬ 
oured to live, after all? There were always ways of 
making shift. He thought of Gritty. She was a sort 
of sublimated Suzy—a Suzy with the advantages of 
talent, brains, and what she had called “one genuine little 
streak.” If Gritty only knew, she would insist on help¬ 
ing him as a right—a right given by sisterly regard. 
In a sense he even owed Gritty the opportunity to be of 
service to him. She had once expressed a desire to share 
his destiny in some way. 

Yet- 

His fatigue was creeping back. The thought of going 
over old ground, of preparing a fresh campaign against 
the world of fact—even were it worth the effort, could 
he undertake the responsibility? Something in him held 
back, something whispered: “Your solo is finished, and a 
damn bad job you made of it; get off the platform.” 

He turned away from the organ. 

For once Monsieur had not dozed. A psychical sym¬ 
pathy which had grown up between them made him 
respond to Paul’s mood. 

“You’re tired, to-day, my young friend. Has some¬ 
thing gone wrong?” 

“Things always go wrong, if one is foolish enough 
to brood. They’re right enough if one doesn’t care.” 

“Then you’ve been brooding—it doesn’t pay.” 

“One has weak moments.” 

The old man eyed him with vague misgiving. Usually 
he was too deeply immersed in his own unreal world to 
be conscious of others’ anxieties. “Pourtant,” he went 


SOLO 


347 


on, “you’ve never played so well as you played to-day. 
That’s curious.” 

“Malheureusement,” supplemented Paul, with a grim 
smile. “Good art is a product of suffering.” 

The old man had retired into his shell. “So well,” 
he insisted, that I was hoping you’d play a little longer 
—perhaps something on the piano.” 

“Volontiers,” Paul acquiesced, though he would rather 
have crept back to his garret. 

He opened the piano and let his fingers roam. He was 
still living in the past. His moral life was unfolding 
itself before him year by year. Instinctively he began 
the sonata he had performed on the night when he had 
first become conscious of having a mission to fulfil. As 
the first movement played itself he relived the tropical 
nights at sea, recaptured the smell of tar, the sound of 
crisp, lapping water and flapping sails, the sight of a 
moonlight track through the indigo gloom, a track down 
which he sent passionate invocations towards a radiant 
future which had become a dreary present. 

In the last movement his courage failed him. That 
triumphant, self-sure theme which he had boldly identi¬ 
fied with his own ego—what a travesty! Yet he forced 
himself to play it, if only as a tribute to the heroic dead 
—for that eager, credulous boy of thirteen was assuredly 
dead. 

His arms dropped at his sides. He could not have 
played another bar. 

M. de Reisenach came towards him with tears in his 
eyes. He looked old and harrowed. It was the first time 
Paul had played the sonata in his house. 

“Ah, mon cher ami, if you only knew what the sonata 
means to me—to us. It was one of my wife’s favourites. 
How many times has she played it for me in the old 
happy days that ceased long ago—before you were even 
born!” 


348 


SOLO 


The old man turned to the arm-chair silhouetted against 
the gathering twilight which showed through a high 
window. “My darling/’ he said, in deeply moved tones, 
“how long we’ve had to wait to hear it again! Aren’t 
you happy?” 

Paul’s glance had instinctively followed the old man’s 
towards the arm-chair which he was so tenderly ad¬ 
dressing, and there, with his own eyes, Paul saw—Aunt 
Verona! 

Not the Aunt Verona he had known, but the 
Mademoiselle Winded who had stirred imaginations 
and captured hearts in Munich and Vienna, young and 
handsome, her dark hair smoothed over her ears, her 
figure lost in folds of silk. 

He started up as if in a trance, old recollections and 
recent gleanings of fact darting through his mind, while 
the image slowly vanished and he saw nothing but the 
vacant chair. 

He turned towards the old man, awe-struck and dumb. 
Then through his dry throat came the words : “Dann sind 
Sie der Prinz Heinrich!” 

He was thinking aloud, having been rendered in¬ 
cautious by fatigue and the overwhelming revelation. 
Already the words had wrought their havoc, for the 
tender, tearful old gentleman had been transformed. 
Paul, holding to the piano for support, found himself 
face to face with a fiend, the personification of insane 
terror, suspicion and guile. He thought of calling out, 
but could make no sound. He could only wait and stare 
through the twilight at a pair of protruding blue eyes. 

Instinctively Paul drew back, a move which kindled 
a baleful glint in the eyes. In an unearthly silence they 
stood watching each other, and Paul felt himself sway. 
Before he could collect his forces a massive object whirred 
past his head, crashing on the keyboard of the piano 
with a hideous clamour. 


SOLO 


349 

Then the madman was upon him. Fingers closed 
about his throat, and the world grew black. 

When he regained consciousness it was to see the 
maniac struggling with three servants and shrieking 
execrations in German as they dragged him from the 
room. Paul lay on the floor, coughing, coughing, with 
a handkerchief to his mouth. He heard a sound of sob¬ 
bing, and realized it was himself. The shrieks died away 
in the distance, and the world was again blacked out. 


XV 

George Paddon, Philippe Bloch, and Karl Zursch- 
miede stood in the garret behind the Gare Montparnasse, 
surveying a little heap of objects spread out on the bed: 
among them a yellow copy of the Liszt Sonata bearing 
an inscription, “V. W., Wien, 1876.” They were looking 
for an address. Despite everything they had heard him 
say about his renunciations, they had the human urge to 
notify some one. 

“There was a diary,” said Paddon. “That may give 
us a hint.” 

Karl, more visibly affected than the others, had been 
silent. “The concierge burnt it,” he interposed. “It 
was his last request.” 

They had another talk with the concierge. 

“Had he no final message?” asked the Englishman. 

“He said something we couldn’t understand,” she re¬ 
plied. “One word was ‘belle.’ It was just at midnight, 
for I remember the great clock outside was chiming the 
hour.” 

Only Paddon had an inkling. Bell, midnight. “ Alors , 
il a du etre -•” he began, but quickly checked himself. 

He had almost said, “Then he must have been English” 
—and although he experienced a guilty emotion of pride 
and proprietorship at the discovery, loyalty bade him 
withhold it. Bloch was eager to prove that the dead man 
had been a French Jew. Zurschmiede, whose mind was 


350 


SOLO 


35 r 


methodical, had already classified his origin as Germanic. 
Whereas all the poor devil had ever asked of anybody 
was that he be allowed to remain his own anomalous 
self. 










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